Future Perfect
by TB's LMC
Summary: Danny takes a hard fall and gets a pretty bad bump on the head. Unfortunately, this is not the worst part of his day, and Steve, well…he's not sure what to do about any of it. Post "I Helu Pu." Heavy bromance, no slash. Cursing - oh, the horror!
1. Chapter 1

_Summary: Danny takes a hard fall and gets a pretty bad bump on the head. Unfortunately, this is not the worst part of his day, and Steve, well…he's not sure what to do about any of it._

_Author's Note: Takes place after Season 2 Episode 16 "I Helu Pu," so there could be a smattering of spoilers for everything up 'til then. Because I doubt H50 will actually DO this, consider the story AU._

* * *

><p><strong>FUTURE PERFECT<strong>

* * *

><p>Really, this was not a big deal. Sure, walk-ups were a pain-in-the-ass for when you were trying to carry groceries inside…which was precisely what Danny was doing at this very moment…but overall, he never minded the exercise of hiking up three stories to get to an apartment any more than he minded running like a bat out of hell to catch a suspect.<p>

It'd been nice to let go and feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins. It'd been twice as nice to prove that McGarrett wasn't the only one who could run down a bad guy, thanks much. Because seriously, the guy was a Topper to end all Toppers and needed to be put in his place once in a while.

Danny smirked as he balanced the five plastic grocery bags hanging from his left hand up against the railing while he tried to dig in his pocket for his keys.

The other sorta nice thing that had happened was that once he'd found out Lori had left (without even saying good-bye to him and what was _that_ about, anyway?), and that she'd outbid both him and Steve on the season tickets and won them…and then given them to the Neanderthal, like…what_ever_ anyway, but…the nice thing to come out of that was Steve giving him half the tickets and then grinning like a loon and saying hell, they'd probably wind up attending most of the games together anyway, right?

"Not if I decide to take my daughter," had been Danny's acidic retort. Steve had pulled Aneurysm Face and that had made Danny's day complete. So all in all, he was in a seriously good mood. Grace was his this weekend, and after the scare a few weeks ago with his ex-partner kidnapping her, Danny was in dire need of Grace Time.

Hence the eight bags of groceries on the flight of stairs and the litany of curses as one of the bags broke just as he managed to get his keys out of his right front pocket. Well, there went the oranges, the apples and the pineapple.

Yes. Pineapple.

_What?_ Grace likes it.

(That's his story and he's sticking to it.)

Except now the pineapple was trying to go AWOL and the oranges and apples were making a break for it, so now he had to run down fruit instead of a perpetrator, and how was this his life again?

There was just one thing he forgot as he turned to high-tail it back down the steps, and that was the loose end of the torn grocery bag, and the fact that plastic's clingy even in eighty percent humidity, and he was wearing his good work shoes with the thick rubber soles, and rubber and plastic, well, they sort of…stick, and…

Shit.

He knew the second before it happened that he was going down. Tucking himself into as tight a ball as possible, he just rode out the fall, felt himself hit the third step up from the landing, and then felt nothing at all.

* * *

><p>Steve had just returned home from his week of Reserves training on board the <em>U.S.S. Enterprise<em>. He was good for the next little while as far as the U.S. Navy was concerned, he felt tired but damn good from the intensity of the training, and he'd managed to get Catherine alone way more than she'd anticipated, which did _wonders_ for his mood.

Hey, he's a guy, what do you expect?

He'd left Danny in charge of Five-0 during his stint away, and was eager to catch up with his friend and second-in-command to find out how the week had gone, if there'd been any action, if Denning had waited until Steve was out-of-town to take the team down a couple of pegs for the Russian Incident.

His face fell out of its smile a bit when he thought of the fact that Lori wouldn't be there in the office come Monday morning. Sure, she'd been forced on the team, and he'd never really been quite sure whether he trusted her or not, truth be told. But you kind of get used to people being there, like he had with Jenna (and look how spectacularly _that_ had turned out, he reminded himself).

And Lori was a nice enough woman, if not a bit…odd…for someone who was supposed to be a profiler. Her confession about having feelings for him wasn't the first time that'd happened to Steve in his life, and he supposed it wouldn't be the last. Many people had passed through the revolving door that was Steve McGarrett's world, some almost stalkerish in a way – and even some _men_, who knew Navy guys could be so obsessive? He snorted, imagining Danny's reaction to _that _thought.

But only Catherine had actually gotten stuck there, stopping that revolving door in its tracks, and Steve? Yeah, he was okay with that. _Way_ okay.

Now Jenna was dead and Lori was gone from Hawaii, and Steve was still the leader of the task force (assuming Denning hadn't given them all pink slips while he was away), and he was surrounded there by three people he could trust with anything and everything and Wo Fat hadn't surfaced in a while and Steve had gotten laid (_Hooyah!_) for a whole week, so overall, life was damn good.

Then he pulled into the small parking lot of Danny's new apartment building. Parked in one of only two visitor parking spaces, turned the truck off, got out, flipped his keys around his index finger as he shut the truck's door, puckered his lips to whistle, turned and—

"Oh, my _God_! _Danny_!"


	2. Chapter 2

Steve waited anxiously just outside those damnable swinging double doors that did more to block him from where he wanted to be than a row of land mines had in Iraq on that one mission…never mind. Classified.

He ran a hand through his hair. He'd already called Chin, who said he'd alert Kono. Next thing Steve knew, the cousins plus Malia plus Charlie Fong (oh, my God, Kono was dating him, seriously?) were making a beeline down the hall for him like a tightly controlled somewhat darkly comical parade of very worried, very serious people.

Steve was honest with them, he had no idea what'd really happened, but from the food everywhere and the fact that one of them had been ripped with apples and oranges and a pineapple (!) everywhere, and from the positioning of Danny and the rest of the grocery bags, it looked like he'd simply fallen down the steps.

Steve, of course, always suspected foul play when anyone he knew was involved, and had HPD processing the scene to make sure there wasn't any evidence that Danny'd been attacked, pushed or otherwise "helped" to where Steve had found him, but overall it seemed like an accident as far as he could tell.

A stupid fucking accident.

Danny, a guy who risked his neck every day of the week ("And twice on Sundays!" Danny would've added had he been here and not fighting for his life behind those _fucking_ swinging double doors), who got into as many firefights as he did foot pursuits and nerve-wracking car chases, felled by a staircase and bags of groceries.

And a pineapple. A goddamn_ pineapple_.

Steve was really working hard _not_ to punch something.

Malia bit her lip. She didn't know Danny very well at all, nor Steve for that matter, but she could see the worry on her husband's face. Charlie knew Kono better than the rest of them (apparently even _better_ than better, Steve noted as he saw the man's hand settle at the small of Kono's back), but he'd worked with Danny a few times and he was worried as hell, too.

Chin's and Kono's faces, well, Steve couldn't bear to look at them because he was sure their looks were mirroring his own, and that _hurt_.

"So you don't know anything? What was his condition when you found him?" Kono asked.

"I saw him when I got out of my truck, I was on the _Enterprise_ when he moved in, as you guys know, but he'd texted me the address and apartment number, and told me to take the flight of stairs nearest the visitor parking spots, so I turned and headed for them and that's when I saw him on the first landing up."

Malia took Chin's hand and squeezed it.

Steve ran a hand through his hair once, twice, three times. Took a deep breath, then continued. "When I got to him, his pulse was thready, his breathing was shallow, and he was pale. _Too_ pale. Pupils fixed and dilated. Medics got there in eight minutes, but I don't know—" Steve felt a lump form in his throat and stopped mid-sentence. Chin moved closer, as though he could somehow project his Zen-like calm onto Steve through sheer force of will. "I don't know how long he was there before I found him," Steve finally managed to finish.

A cell phone trilled and Steve pulled his out of one of his cargo pants pockets. "McGarrett," he answered. A pause. "Yeah, Duke, okay, just…have the building manager let you into his place, stash whatever goes in the fridge and just double-check for any signs of foul play before you go, okay?" He looked at Kono. At Charlie. At Chin. At Malia. "No, I'm his next-of-kin, I'll let Rachel know."

Chin's eyebrows went up a bit. Kono did a mini double-take. Steve hung up the phone. "What?" he asked, placing it back into the pocket.

"Really?" Chin asked.

"Well, who else?" Steve asked. "His ex-wife?"

Chin opened his mouth, thought the better of it, and closed it. Kono lacked her cousin's finesse, however, and was about to go ahead and say it anyway when a man's voice from behind them said, "Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett?"

Steve turned, hand already outstretched to shake the hand of who he presumed was the doctor. But the look on the doctor's face made his arm drop listlessly back to his side.

"Danny?" Steve said in a voice he was sure was far too small to be his own.

Instantly Kono was on his right and Chin was on his left, their significant others standing behind them. "Doc?" Chin prompted.

"Lieutenant Commander McGarrett, I'm Dr. Ma," the Chinese man who couldn't have been any taller than Danny said, hand outstretched. Steve took it, shook, but was in a daze. "I'm afraid I need to speak with you privately."

"Whatever it is can be said in front of Danny's _ohana_," Steve countered.

"No, I mean, Detective Williams' wishes on this are very clear. If anything happens to incapacitate him, you are his next-of-kin, and anyone in charge of his care is _only_ supposed to speak with _you_, privately."

Steve's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. He looked at Kono. "S'okay, _brah_, we'll be right here," she assured him.

"Go ahead," Chin said, hand touching Steve's shoulder.

Steve nodded and followed the doctor through the swinging double doors. He felt like a dog taking its last walk at the pound. All he could think was, _Danno's as stubborn when he's fighting for his life as he is when he's standing right next to me giving me shit._

He hoped, _prayed_, that stubborn nature would keep his partner alive.


	3. Chapter 3

"Please, have a seat," Dr. Ma said, gesturing to two pea soup-green chairs opposite a very cluttered, disorganized desk. He rounded behind it and made to sit down, but noted Steve hadn't done the same.

Steve _couldn't_ sit. He had to be ready to spring into action at a moment's notice because…because what? Because he'd somehow be able to run out, find Danny, and save him if this doctor tried to tell him there _was_ no saving him?

It was foolish. Steve knew this. He didn't care. He would stand.

Dr. Ma seemed to understand the unspoken conflict in the man before him, nodded once, and remained upright as well. "Lieutenant Commander McGarrett, your friend took a bad blow to the head."

Steve swallowed, folded his arms over his chest, muscles flexing as his hands clenched and unclenched beneath his armpits.

"Detective Williams had a seizure shortly after the trauma nurse had taken his vitals."

Steve went rigid.

"He's having a CT scan as we speak, then we'll do a three-sixty skull X-ray. I have to be honest here, I'm suspecting some form of traumatic brain injury. Whether we're talking a hematoma in the many forms that can take, a skull fracture or damage to some other portion of his brain is up in the air until I see those scans."

Steve wasn't breathing.

"I need to ensure you understand my meaning here, Lieutenant Commander. The fact that he experienced what would equate to a _grand mal_ seizure on the table, and has been unconscious for an unknown period of time, combined with his pupils being fixed but different sizes from each other, his breathing difficulty, pallor and weak pulse indicate the extent of his injuries may be severe."

Steve swallowed, but he had no spit there _to_ swallow. He remembered to inhale, so violently it almost sounded like a gasp. His fists were balled so tight he could feel his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands.

"Are we talking severe in that he'll come out of this with some sort of…disability?" he asked quietly. "Or severe in that he won't come out…" His voice trailed off. He just couldn't ask.

_Won't come out of it at all…_ echoed through his mind.

"I might be able to answer that once I see the scans, but even then the brain is a funny thing. For all we know about it, there's more we _don't_ know, and how Detective Williams reacts to whatever the injury is, is completely individual to him. What sends one person into a coma they never wake from could do nothing more to another patient than cause them to become dyslexic or suddenly be able to speak another language they've never before heard. I wanted to prepare you, and will be keeping you apprised every step of the way, as per the detective's wishes."

Steve couldn't help but let a wan smile grace his features. "He was that specific in his instructions, huh?"

The doctor smiled in return. "I've never seen anything like it. He didn't want anyone worrying too much, and presumably guessed you would handle the interface with others once you had the facts." Ma shrugged. "We know you here at Kings, we know _all_ of you, and given what that young man's made it through in the short time Five-0's existed, I can't help but respect his wishes to the letter."

_What that young man's made it through in the short time Five-0's existed…_

And it was Steve's fault. All of it.

Whether it was, in reality, was irrelevant. Steve knew no other way than taking the weight of the world on his shoulders. Whether it was his mother's and father's murders or the kidnapping of Danny's daughter – something that had _nothing_ at all to do with him in any way. From the men he'd once commanded in the Navy to the task force he now was in charge of, and every person who'd ever followed his orders, Steve _needed_ the responsibility of taking everything onto himself. It was in his genes. In his blood. It was _him_.

In this case, Danny had fallen down the stairs. Steve hadn't been there; he wouldn't have had any reason to be there even if he _hadn't_ been gone to training for a week. Danny'd gone grocery shopping, he was coming home, he was going to prepare for picking up Grace tonight—

Steve's eyes widened. He looked at his watch and they widened even more.

Grace. Danny was supposed to pick her up from school at three fifteen.

It was two fifty-two.

"When will you know more about Danny's condition?" Steve asked.

Dr. Ma held his hands in the air in an _I-don't-know-for-sure_ gesture. "As soon as I get a look at the scans, and I have a brain surgeon on his way from the North Shore. He's the best in the islands, Dr. Noshimuri."

Steve _stared_ at Ma. "Doctor _what_?"

"Alan Noshimuri, Mr. McGarrett. He's been practicing on Oahu for two years, and is very good. What's the matter?"

It couldn't be.

There couldn't be another man related to…to…

And working on _Danny_?

"I need to go pick Danny's daughter up," Steve said abruptly. "You have my cell phone number."

"Yes," Ma replied, looking at him very strangely.

"Call me the _second_ you know anything," Steve ordered and yes, it came out like a command, not a request.

"I will, Lieutenant Commander, I will," the doctor replied. He followed Steve out the door and watched him stalk away. Some part of him hoped he'd have really good news to share with the man in an hour's time because he was a little frightened of what the consequences might be if he didn't. The other half of him knew from having seen McGarrett and the others in their ER before, that Steve wouldn't hurt a fly where the health and well-being of his team was concerned. He would, however, go to the ends of the Earth to make sure they got the proper care.

Ma sighed. All any of them could do right now was hope.

* * *

><p>Danny, Danny was floating. Flying. He wasn't sure which, but it was good. It was <em>all<em> good.

There were clouds. There was a sky, it was blue. There was the sun, it was warm but not so hot like the Hawaiin sun.

Oh! He must be back in Jersey! Home at last, home where he belonged.

It felt good. _So_ good, and then he saw his daughter. She was flying, too! They must all be able to fly, he thought, it must be a Williams gene. Of course it was, Williams' are special people, after all.

Grace joined him, reached out to take his hand, and he was smiling, _beaming_, he could _feel_ it cover his face and so, so happy. So happy.

Then her face crumpled.

Her eyes filled with tears as she was jerked away from him, like someone had physically pulled her hand from his before they'd even touched. Her arms were outstretched, the big, huge tears rolled down her cheeks unbidden.

Why was she sad, why was she crying? Why wouldn't they let her come to him, he _needs_ his baby girl, he _wants_ her, he wants to _hug_ her, chase those tears away, why are there tears? Who's doing this? Why was she so sad, so _sad_?

Then he saw his partner, saw him bend down to one knee, saw him open his arms, saw Grace launch herself into them, wrap her arms around his neck. Saw him stand up holding onto his daughter.

_His_ daughter, she's _Danny's_, she's not Steve's, why was Steve comforting her and not Danny? She's…she's _Danny's_.

Her face was buried in Steve's shoulder, her body shaking, and Steve turned just enough that Danny could see _his_ face, and…

Steve was…_crying_.

A blinding flash of pain and they were gone, and Danny didn't see anymore.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve pulled his truck up in front of Grace's school. The children had only just been released, so by the time he got out, pocketed his keys and started scanning the area as he walked toward the front steps, she appeared.

She saw him almost immediately, and her face went from the bright smile of anticipating seeing her Danno, to the concerned frown that came from seeing her Uncle Steve. She called out to him, walked quickly to him, and accepted his open arms as he got down on one knee like he always did.

"Where's Danno?" she asked, pulling away just enough to look him in the eye.

"He's in the hospital, Gracie," Steve said evenly, willing his fear not to bleed into his voice. Kids, they knew so much, could pick up anyone's tells no matter how hard they tried to hide something. Steve prayed his SEAL training was good enough to not scare this poor girl out of her wits.

"Is he going to be okay?" she asked, and Steve was transported back via _déjà vu_ to the last time he'd been right here, just like this, and she'd asked the same thing. Then, he _knew_ Danny would be fine. Now? Now, he…didn't.

How to tell her? He couldn't lie. Danny had always made it _very_ clear that he _never_ lied to his daughter. He was okay, however, with stretching the truth a little to preserve her innocence. But that innocence had already been shattered thanks to Rick Peterson kidnapping her and taping her to a chair in a storage unit. Her big, brown eyes looked into his hazel ones and he swallowed hard.

"Grace, your father fell down the steps at his new apartment building. I found him and he went to the hospital. He hit his head, but the doctor doesn't know much more than that right now."

There. The truth, but not the dire possibilities associated with it.

"Danno fell?" Grace repeated, an incredulous look on her face. "But he never falls. He always says he's the only Williams who doesn't trip over his own feet."

Steve couldn't help but smile. That sounded like Danny. "It looks like he was carrying groceries up the stairs and one of the bags broke. After that, we're not sure what happened. Tell you what," he said, forcing his voice to sound light-hearted, "we'll ask him what happened when he wakes up, and you can give him a hard time about tripping over his own feet, okay?"

She nodded, but she didn't smile, and Steve couldn't blame her. The child of any cop lives through things like this all the time, just like cops' wives or husbands. It had been, if Rachel's own words were to be believed, why she couldn't stay married to Danny anymore.

Rachel. Steve sighed as he ensured Grace was belted into the backseat properly, then got into the driver's seat. "I need to call your mom," he said, looking at her in the rearview mirror.

"Okay," she said. "Do you need to use my cell phone?"

"No, that's okay, I've got mine. I'm going to take you to the hospital first. Chin and Kono are there, so is Chin's new wife Malia, have you met her?"

Grace shook her head, her two braids flopping on and off her shoulders.

"Well, she's really nice, and she's a doctor, too, so she can help us understand how your dad is, okay?"

"Okay," Grace replied.

"And another friend is there, too, Charlie Fong. He works in the lab, helping us figure out what evidence means."

"Cool," she said, staring out the window.

There really wasn't anything else Steve could say to make her feel better, so he just started the truck, put it in gear, and pulled away from the school. He knew Grace wouldn't be happy until Danny was calling her Monkey and saying, "Danno loves you," and giving her a hug and a hundred kisses and telling her he was going to be fine.

Come to think of it, _Steve_ wouldn't be happy until that happened, either.

* * *

><p>Gracie graciously accepted hugs from her adopted aunt and uncle in the ER waiting room. Steve's unspoken question was answered with a minute shake of Chin's head. Nothing from the doctor, then, which meant no news on Danny.<p>

"Do you need something to drink, or a snack, maybe?" Steve asked Grace as he guided her to a chair between Kono and Malia.

Grace nodded, took her backpack off her back and sat down.

"I'll get you something," Kono volunteered.

"And I'll introduce you to my wife," Chin said with a smile.

Steve leaned forward and whispered into Chin's ear, "I've got to call Rachel."

Chin nodded once, gave him a look that said _I don't envy you that conversation_ and proceeded to get Grace and Malia acquainted with each other. Kono, with Charlie in tow, went down the hall and around to the corner to the vending machines.

Steve looked all around, and decided outside was the safest place to have this conversation. So out he went, looked in his cell phone's contact list and pulled up Rachel Edwards. His thumb hesitated over her home number for a fraction of a second before he took a deep breath and hit it.

* * *

><p>Rachel had just finished nursing her beautiful baby boy when the phone rang, startling him just as she got him over her shoulder. She soothed him with a small hum as she picked the handset up off the end table, gently tapping on his back with one hand while she eyeballed the display screen with the other.<p>

Her heart stopped. There was no reason for Steve McGarrett to be calling her except—

"Commander McGarrett, what's happened?" she asked, fear plain to hear in her voice.

"_Rachel, Danny fell down the stairs at his new apartment building. They're doing some scans and X-rays now, we don't know anything yet. But I wanted to let you know I have Grace here at Kings, and Chin and his wife, and Kono and our friend Charlie Fong are here, too, so she's fine."_

Rachel's eyes filled with tears. "Fell down the…_stairs_?" she repeated in disbelief. "How is that even _possible_?"

"_I don't know, I wasn't there when it happened. I just got back from reserve training and found him when I went to check in with him about Five-0."_

"I can have the nanny look after the baby, but I must call Stan before I can leave, he's meant to be going to physical therapy today for his…" Her voice faded. When she continued, it was soft and quiet. "For his shoulder."

"_Okay. I'll see you when you get here."_

"Thank you, Commander."

There was a moment's silence, and then, _"It's Steve. Just Steve."_

Rachel swallowed hard, wiped the wetness from her eyes and quickly dialed her husband's work number. She could barely contain the trembling of her voice as she explained what had happened and where she would be.

He was so understanding, she thought as she hung up from that call. Much moreso than she deserved.

It was all Rachel could do to get herself dressed properly, leave the nanny with instructions should she and Grace not return by the baby's next feeding, and drive herself to Kings without getting into a wreck.

How many times had she been here before? _Right_ here, and the last time, it had ended with her and Danny in bed.

This time, she knew that wouldn't happen.

But she also knew far too intimately the sound of fear in the voice of someone holding back something frightening about a person they cared deeply for, and she'd heard that tone in the Lieutenant Commander's…in _Steve's_…voice.

By the time she reached Kings, her hands and feet had turned as ice-cold as the fear clutching at her heart. Yes, she still loved her ex-husband. Yes, she always would.

And this kind of thing would _always_ keep happening. But Rachel was strong. She _had_ to be strong. If not for herself, then for her children. For _Danny's_ child.

For Grace.


	5. Chapter 5

The wait was interminable.

Rachel had arrived; Steve told her he knew nothing more than what he'd already said on the phone. She asked how it was the hospital had been granted permission to do anything at all without her signature.

So he explained that one week before Grace's kidnapping, Danny had talked to him about changing his next-of-kin notification.

"_You're with me practically all the time anyway, and Rachel, well, she's got Stan and two kids to worry about now." He looked Steve in the eye. "I think it's time she just becomes what she should've become the moment she left me: the mother of my child. Nothing more."_

_Steve hadn't quite known what to do with that other than accept, because a next-of-kin was no trivial matter. If anything ever happened to incapacitate his partner, if a decision had to be made about his welfare, if he got hurt or…worse…it'd be Steve they'd notify now. Steve would would make the decision. Not Danny's ex-wife. Not Danny's parents. Him._

"_Of course, Danny," he said with a smile, trying for nonchalant. "I've got your back." And then he made a confession because such a thing was definitely warranted in a serious moment like this. "When Joe came back, I…changed my next-of-kin from Mary to him. He was here, she's in LA, it made sense."_

"_And now?" Danny asked._

"_Maybe I should change it to you."_

_Danny eyed him suspiciously. "Because I'm the backup?"_

_Steve grinned. "Yeah, Danno. That's why."_

And Steve had.

Rachel said she understood but Steve could sense the change in her. Even _he_ was surprised Danny hadn't told her about it at _all_, especially in light of Grace's kidnapping. He could tell it unnerved her. He supposed he could understand, all things considered, but Jesus, he was just a cop's partner. A cop's partner, he mentally corrected himself, and best friend.

_Wow_, he thought as Rachel chewed on her lip. _Awkward_.

* * *

><p>Rachel felt sideswiped, but she wasn't angry, just...maybe a little sad. It seemed Danny had broken the one final tie between them that <em>could<em> be broken, that being who was notified in the event of an emergency. They would always have Grace between them, and always love her and do their best to take care of her, but that was it now. Danny's choice, and Danny not _telling_ her about it, made that crystal clear.

She held Grace tightly. Just as she had after Danny and Steve had found her tied up in the storage unit. She hadn't let her only daughter go for a long, long time that night. Neither had Danny. Once Grace had collapsed, exhausted, into her bed at the Edwards home, both parents had stayed at her bedside dozing in their chairs, the nanny handling the baby while they prayed and prayed that Grace would be okay.

So far, so good with the three visits she'd made to a pediatric psychologist. And now this.

Dammit.

_"She's strong,"_ Danny had said in the days following the kidnapping._ "She's a Williams."_

Now Rachel repeated something similar over and over in her mind, willing it to be true. _He's strong. He's a Williams._

Grace needed it to be true. No less than Rachel.

* * *

><p>Steve watched as Rachel walked Grace to the ladies room out in the hall. He heard those (<em>fucking<em>) swinging double doors open and whipped around just as Dr. Ma appeared with a man who looked Japanese. Steve's heart plummeted. A man who looked Japanese and looked like a carbon copy of Hiro Noshimuri…albeit a couple decades younger.

"Lieutenant Commander McGarrett, this is Dr. Noshimuri, the brain surgeon I told you about. If you'll come with us, please?"

Steve shook the Japanese man's hand and nodded. He wanted, _oh_, how he wanted to ask this man if he was a son of Noshimuri, a son Five-0 had no clue existed. They knew only of Adam, and since finding out his father was alive, Adam had left them alone, but…this? Could it be a coincidence, the name and the looks?

Steve doubted it. He didn't believe in coincidences.

Nevertheless, he turned to Chin, asked him to let Rachel know he was with the doctors, and followed the men back through the swinging doors.

Another last walk in the pound, he mused as they entered the same unkempt office as before.

This time, Noshimuri took a seat in one of the two green chairs, Ma took the chair behind his desk and gestured for McGarrett to sit, too. Right next to a Noshimuri. He grimaced, but did as requested.

"Lieutenant Commander," Noshimuri said, his voice deep and gruff, "before we proceed, I can tell by the look on your face that you have figured out who my father is."

Steve clenched his fists. "We didn't know Hiro had any sons other than Adam."

"He does. Two of us, from his first wife in Japan. It wouldn't surprise me that we're not on your American records, as the marriage ended many, many years ago before my father ever came to this country." Noshimuri shifted in his seat. "I can assure you that whatever grievances you have had in the past or may continue to have with my father or my half-brother Adam, are of no concern to me. I am a brain surgeon, devoted to my profession. Thanks to my mother, my own brother and I have never had anything to do with my father's…business dealings."

Steve stared at him for a little while, mindful of the fact that he had an audience in the innocent and probably very confused Dr. Ma. "I expect Danny to get the best you've got to offer," he finally said.

"All of my patients do, Lieutenant Commander McGarrett. Your partner will be no exception. Now, pleasantries aside, may we proceed in discussing his case?"

Steve hesitated. A Noshimuri in charge of Danny's well-being? The very thought _sickened_ him, and yet…he didn't get that bad twist to the gut with Alan like he had with Hiro or even Adam, when he'd had a gun pointed at him and Joe. Pretty soon Steve would be getting Chin and Kono on the Alan Noshimuri question, but for now, he needed to know how Danny was, and had little choice but to trust that whatever Noshimuri was going to tell him, Dr. Ma would know if any of it was bullshit.

"Fine, how is he?" Steve said, his hands still balled up tight.

"Detective Williams sustained an injury to a portion of the brain called the right uncinate fasciculus." Off Steve's confounded look, he explained, "The uncinate fasciculus is an area of the brain located between the forward portions of the temporal lobe," he pointed toward first the right, then the left side of his own head, above his ears, "and the lower edge of the frontal lobe." With that, he gestured to his forehead and the area just above it. "The uncinate fasciculus is shaped like a fishing hook, for lack of a better comparison, and is part of the human limbic system."

Steve blinked, suddenly wishing he'd brought Malia back here with him.

Noshimuri looked sympathetic. Steve was willing to bet he hit this sort of thing all the time, trying to explain complex human anatomy to scared, confused loved ones. "The portion of Detective Williams' uncinate fasciculus which appears to have been traumatized by his fall is responsible for auditory-verbal memory."

Steve glanced at Dr. Ma, who smiled. "It's the part of the brain that handles being aware of yourself as an individual, Mr. McGarrett."

"There is currently research," Noshimuri added, "which is pointing toward the fact that the sensation known as _déjà vu_ also originates in this part of the brain, as well as how we remember what we hear and see. The way the sounds and images form impressions upon us which remain with us long after the events in question. When this portion of the brain is stimulated directly, it sends the subject into somewhat of a dreamy state of existence, where they may be reliving past images and sounds, or possibly connecting with other portions of the brain to form new ones that _seem_ real."

Steve looked to Ma again, who nodded, giving him the reassurance he needed that Noshimuri was telling him the truth. "So what does that mean for Danny, that he…what, won't be able to dream or have _déjà vu_ anymore, or what?"

"Unfortunately, Lieutenant Commander," Noshimuri said, taking off his thin-framed silver glasses and cleaning the lenses with his white lab coat, "while we think we know what the uncinate fasciculus does for us, I am unable to find a previous case in which damage to that area was indicated outside of tests on lab animals. And as I'm certain you are aware, humans are much more complex in terms of their brain activity than any rats or mice, or even dogs."

Steve felt his stomach flip at the thought of _any_ animals being experimented on, but especially dogs. He liked dogs. They just usually didn't like _him_. Case in point: the one Danny had rescued and given to Grace. To this day, the damn thing still barked crazily at him like he was _persona non grata_ in his canine sphere.

"Doctor, I've got Danny's ex-wife and his nine-year old daughter out in that waiting room waiting to find out if the man they care about is going to die," Steve said, pointing back toward the door with one long, outstretched arm. "So I need to know right now, exactly that."

Ma and Noshimuri exchanged glances. It was Ma who spoke. "We haven't yet determined whether the seizure Detective Williams experienced was caused by this specific injury, but there are no hematomas and the CT scan didn't show any other indications of trauma, so it could simply have been that he sustained a severe concussion or, as Dr. Noshimuri indicated, there could be far more repercussions of damaging the uncinate area of the brain that we simply cannot foresee."

"However," Noshimuri interjected, "at this time I don't expect Detective Williams to be severely incapacitated by his injury. I have him attached to several devices to monitor brain activity, and once he's awake and aware, we will run him through a battery of additional tests to see if there is any brain damage we've not detected. But to answer your earlier question more succinctly, yes, Detective Williams will survive, and barring any unforeseen ramifications of this injury, I don't believe he will be mentally incapacitated."

Steve deflated in the chair, rubbed his forehead, then scrubbed that same hand down the stubble on his face. Danny was going to live.

Danny was going to _live_.


	6. Chapter 6

Almost ninety minutes passed with nothing more for Steve to do than check in with Kono and Chin, who'd taken Charlie and Malia back to the Five-0 offices with them, and sit and try to pretend he wasn't watching Rachel and Grace like a hawk.

Even with all their expertise at finding information and hacking into other systems, the cousins weren't getting very far discovering anything about Alan Noshimuri. Whether he'd told Steve the truth about his parentage and his lack of affiliation with his father or the Yakuza was front and center in Steve's mind, vying for attention with his concern for his partner.

He wanted more than anything to be out there pounding the pavement trying to find out if Alan was who he said he was, and if his two years on Oahu had been straightforward brain surgery or if he'd actually had anything to do with his dad. After all, why would he come to Hawaii if he hadn't? A reconciliation, maybe, between father and son, stopped short with the help of Joe White?

And Joe was nowhere Steve could get in touch with him to ask, not that he was certain he'd get a straightforward answer out of the man anyway. The whole Shelburne thing had left a bad taste in Steve's mouth he hadn't been able to reconcile himself with no matter how many ways he'd thought about it.

He shook himself out of his reverie when he realized young Grace was standing right in front of him. She looked tired. She looked worried. She looked a lot older than her nine years and his heart went out to her. Without even thinking about it, his hand darted out to rest on her shoulder.

"Thank you for finding Danno," she said in a small voice. "And…thank you for helping him find me, too."

His jaw worked as he tried to keep his emotions in check. When he reached out with his other hand and pulled her between the V of his legs and into his arms, he looked up to find Rachel surreptitiously wiping away tears he knew she didn't want him to see. Because she didn't want him to know how in love with her ex-husband she still was, in spite of her love for Stan and their new son.

What a way to live, Steve thought as he squeezed his eyes closed and just accepted the love from this child who seemed to have so much to give. Torn between your first love and father of your first child, and your second love and father of your second child. How to reconcile being torn like that, especially when faced with what could go so wrong right now.

He'd told Rachel everything Noshimuri and Ma had relayed to him, trying his best to remember even the medical terms and not knowing whether or not he'd actually gotten them right at all. Then when Rachel had gone to try to explain things to Grace on her own terms, Steve had called Chin and been put on speaker phone. When he'd relayed what the doctors had told him, Malia seemed to concur that it all sounded on the level, though she admitted to not being an expert on the brain under any circumstances. She promised to do some research on the matter while Chin, Kono and Charlie continued their hunt for facts on Alan Noshimuri.

Finally Steve released his hold on Grace, who stepped back a little with a small smile on her face. "You're a good uncle," she said and Steve thought maybe he was going to spontaneously combust, he felt so hot.

"Her only uncle was Matthew," Rachel offered by way of explanation. "Until you."

"Well, it's like Danno says," Steve replied, trying for joviality, "how can I be anything _but_ when it's _you_ we're talking about here?"

Grace giggled. "That sounds just like Danno."

Steve jumped when the double doors flew open. He took a deep breath to steady himself because, really, a SEAL freaked out by doors opening? Not cool, _totally_ not cool. He rose to his feet when he realized it was Dr. Ma rushing through them and making a beeline for the small waiting room they were in.

"Doctor, what is it?" Rachel asked breathlessly as Grace rushed back to her side and took her hand.

"Dr. Noshimuri and I can't explain it," he said, equally breathless. "But…Detective Williams is awake and…" His jaw stayed open as though he was simply too surprised to continue the thought.

"And _what_?" Steve prodded impatiently. "What's _wrong_?"

"Nothing," Ma said, visibly giving himself a mental shake. "He's awake and he's…asking for his Monkey. What is this Monkey?"

"Me!" Grace piped up, raising her hand and jumping up and down. "That's me!"

"That's her father's nickname for her," Rachel explained.

"He wants to see me, that means he's okay!" Grace beamed, hugging her mother.

Steve moved closer to Ma and spoke in quiet tones. "Is there anything wrong, you seem shocked."

"I _am_, we weren't figuring he would wake up for _hours_ yet, and he's fully cognizant, fully aware of who he is, what happened to him, and where he is. He said, "I know that Neanderthal is out there with my Monkey, I want to see them," and he won't calm himself enough for us to test his brainwave activity."

Steve burst out laughing, hope rising in him so quickly he very nearly lost his shit on the spot. The grin didn't leave his face when Ma continued, "We thought it best if someone brought this Monkey of his in to see him so we can at least perform some more tests. His pupils are even reacting normally to light stimuli!"

Rachel exchanged smiles and looks of relief with Steve, who gestured for her and Grace to follow Dr. Ma. Sure, he wanted to see his partner, but Grace came first, and Grace's mother was Rachel and that's how things were.

"I'm afraid only two of you can come back, so the little girl and one adult. We don't want _any_ visitors, but cannot allow minors in alone, so just the two, please," Ma advised.

Rachel didn't move from where she stood. Steve frowned. Why wasn't she halfway down the hall already? "Rachel?" he prompted, gesturing again toward Dr. Ma.

"He asked to see Grace and _you_," Rachel said softly, urging her little girl toward Steve with a gentle nudge to her shoulder. "I think perhaps to calm him, it would be best to respect his wishes, don't you?"

"But I'm his partner," Steve protested, frown deepening. This made no sense to him at all. "His partner, not his spouse."

Rachel looked down at Grace, who looked up at her with those big, brown eyes. Then her eyes met Steve's. "I'm not his spouse either," she said, a tremor in her voice. "It's no longer my place."

_That doesn't make it mine!_ was the first thing that ran through Steve's head but his internal filter stopped it from coming right out of his mouth. After all, Danny _had_ asked for his Neanderthal and his Monkey, if Dr. Ma was to be believed. And Steve _was_ his next-of-kin now.

People always asked how long they'd been married. Even Lori had at the beginning out there on horseback. Steve continued to look at Rachel like he didn't quite understand, but he also knew that the longer Danny was denied his daughter, the more agitated he'd become until it was quite possible he'd just rip every monitoring device off and out of his body and run out there to get her himself.

His need to protect made him spring into action. With a curt nod at Rachel, he meant to head off after Dr. Ma, only to find a small hand slipping into his larger one and squeezing as Grace looked at him expectantly. "Take me to see Danno?" she said.

He swallowed hard. Danny was right. You couldn't deny this little girl _anything_. " Come on, let's go give him heck for tripping over his own feet, okay?"

She grinned and nodded. Dr. Ma went back through the doors. Steve hesitated as he held one open for Grace. He turned and looked back at Rachel, who nodded and smiled, and then pulled her cell phone out. Undoubtedly to check in with her husband or maybe with her nanny to see how her baby was doing.

Leaving Steve to take charge of Danny's first moments awake, and of Danny's daughter, while it wasn't necessarily a net new experience, made him feel somehow like he was in the middle of something way bigger than him; like Rachel was finally letting go – or at least _trying_ to – and was only able to do so with the confidence that Danny still had Grace, and that he had Steve to take Rachel's place.

Which was…odd…since it wasn't like that at _all_ for either of them, but…in a way it felt…okay, Steve was seriously going to stop thinking about this because a) it made his head hurt, b) what mattered here was Danny's health, not who was going to see him first, and c) what the fuck, even?

They rounded the end of the hall into a new hall on the right, and Ma gestured for them to enter the first room on the left.

When Steve and Grace saw Danny's face light up like a Christmas tree as they went through the door, both partner and daughter knew he was going to be _just_ fine.


	7. Chapter 7

"I'm _fine_, Steven, hard head, remember? You've told me so yourself on _numerous_ occasions."

But Steve, he simply could not believe that there Danny sat, upright in a hospital bed with Grace on his lap and doctors buzzing around him that he kept swatting at like Danny would. He wasn't speaking any weird foreign languages. He wasn't acting like he was in a dream-like state. He didn't sound any different, talk any different. Didn't seem to be anything but the Danno that Steve had last seen before heading off to Catherine's hotel room a week earlier.

"If you, my friend, do _not_ stop staring at me, I will have these doctors hook _your_ head up to all this…stuff…which, come to think of it, would _seriously_ not be a bad idea given the fact that we all know you were dropped on the head in question as an infant. _Multiple_ times."

"Daddy!" Grace gasped. "That's not nice! Uncle Steve came and picked me up from school!"

"That's because he knew I'd kill him if he left you there," Danny replied, squeezing Grace tightly and then tickling her ribs.

"But, but," she gasped through her laughter, "he also called Mommy and kept her…kept her…" Grace frowned and looked across the room. "What's that word, Uncle Steve?"

Steve cleared his throat. "Apprised."

"Apprised. Right."

"Rachel's here?"

"She's out in the waiting room. Dr. Ma would only let Grace plus one visit."

Danny's eyes narrowed. He could read McGarrett like the front page of the Star-Advertiser, and there was a little more to it than that, he was sure. But…not in front of Grace. No, for now, he was going to enjoy Super Grace and her sidekick Super SEAL – never mind who comes up with those particular bedtime stories, thanks much – and he'd find out what was going on later.

Grace snuggled into his chest as he leaned back against the raised hospital bed and closed his eyes, peaceful as only she could make him. He reveled in the weight of one of her braids as it fell forward onto his arm. He listened to her breathing and felt her body move slightly against him as she inhaled and exhaled. Then he opened his eyes to find Steve _still_ staring at him.

But through the haze of endorphins his daughter always managed to make his brain release, he couldn't be bothered to glare or scowl. Instead he just smiled, and was relieved when his partner's brow smoothed and he got an honest-to-God Steve Smile in response.

He wasn't sure what all the fuss was about; why these two doctors were scurrying around him like he was the best lab rat _ever_, but he didn't care. They could do what they wished. As he'd told Steve last time they'd been in a similar situation, he had everything he needed right here.

Steve decided it was time to go let Rachel come in and see for herself that Danny was fine. If for no other reason than to give Grace the love of both her parents at once, as it should be. He turned to leave the room, the smile he'd given Danny still on his face.

"Danno?"

The tone of her voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

"_Danno!_" Grace shrieked before Steve could even turn back around. "Uncle _Steve_!"

"Grace, you need to get off the bed _now_," Dr. Ma said, urging her down.

"No, no, Danno!"

Big tears rolled down her face as she clung to her father's hospital gown. Steve stared, frozen in the moment, as he watched Danny convulse. Seize. Shake so hard he rattled the entire bed.

"Grace!" Steve said, motioning to her.

She looked up at him, then a nurse lifted her under her armpits and forced her to pull away from her father.

Steve was there in a heartbeat, giving the nurse a nasty look as she set Grace down on the floor. "Uncle Steve, what's wrong with him?" she cried as he took her hand and pulled her into the far corner of the room.

"I don't know, Gracie," Steve choked out, voice untrustworthy at best, downright betraying his fear at worst.

The little girl started crying in earnest, and Steve couldn't see Danny right now anyway, though the bed had stopped rattling at least, which he assumed meant Danny was no longer having a seizure. He felt the first bubbling of sheer terror and grief well up in his chest and huffed out a few breaths as he tried desperately to control himself.

Steve got down onto one knee as Grace's tear-filled eyes pleaded with him. But there was nothing he could do. He was responsible, dammit, responsible for Danny's life, for his entire _team's_ lives, and right now for Grace. And he could do _nothing_. Nothing for Danny, nothing for his daughter. _Nothing_.

Grace launched herself into his arms and wrapped her small arms around his neck. Steve stood up, clinging to Grace as much as she was clinging to him with her legs wrapped around his middle and her face buried in his shoulder. He felt the wetness of her tears soaking through his outer button-down shirt, into his skin through the strap of the tank top underneath.

Her body shook as she sobbed, "Danno!" over and over into the fabric and suddenly Steve couldn't hold back anymore. He turned to face the bed, if for no other reason than to ensure Grace _wasn't_ facing it if she lifted her head. As he took in the now-still and extremely pale form of his partner, with doctors and nurses barking words at each other that he couldn't make himself understand, he felt tears slip out of his eyes and slowly make their way down his face.

It had been a long time since Steve McGarrett cried.

A _very_ long time.

He ran out of the room, holding Gracie tightly to him, and headed for Rachel. That was where Grace needed to be right now. Not in the room with her father. Especially not if…

No. He would _not_ go there. Danny dying was _not an option_.

Not a fucking _option_.

* * *

><p>Rachel knew.<p>

From the second Steve burst through the double swinging doors, her daughter clinging to him like her very life depended on it, she _knew_ something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. And that Grace had seen it happen.

It took a few moments for the two adults to pry Grace from Steve's torso and get her into Rachel's arms. Only then, while holding her child to her as tightly as she could, did she chance a look at the Navy commander.

The Navy commander who was _crying_.

Her heart felt like it did a three-sixty in her chest and then stopped beating altogether. Her eyes begged him to tell her even as her mind screamed that it didn't want to know.

Steve turned away, and when he pivoted back to face her, his cheeks were dry, though his eyes were anything but. "He had a seizure," he explained, nodding his head toward Grace, "while she was on his lap."

"Oh, dear God," Rachel breathed, burying her face in Gracie's hair. The child's sobs had subsided, but the tears still flowed. "Is he…?" she asked, unable to finish the question.

"Heart rate was up on the monitor, but he's fighting for it," Steve said, and as his own words passed through his lips, he knew his tears hadn't been because he truly thought Danny would die. They'd been caused by the fact that Grace, the child who'd been through so much already in her short life, had witnessed it, felt it, seen her father in a way no child should _ever_ have to see a parent: incapacitated. Hurt. Flat on his back and terrifyingly, most definitely, _not_ okay.

He turned and stared at those _goddamn fucking_ double doors, willing a doctor or nurse to appear, to tell them it hadn't happened. So unrealistic, but Steve didn't care. He was at his wits' end already, riding mountains of emotion like the most twisted, fucked-up roller coaster ever made. Flying high as a kite from his week with Catherine. Finding Danny hurt, unconscious, lying on the stairs. Hearing he'd had a seizure and was suffering from head trauma.

Having to handle post-trauma Gracie learning that once again, her Danno was in the hospital. Finding out he was suddenly awake and acting one hundred percent normal. Watching him go from doting, loving, peace-filled father to a victim of his own mind and body. Hearing and seeing and feeling Grace cry and look to him like a god who could snap his fingers and suddenly make everything right. Make her father whole and hale and healthy like he was supposed to be.

Rachel sank into a chair still holding her girl, and Steve just stood there helplessly.

It wasn't a feeling he was all that familiar with, and the only times he was were associated with his mother's death, his father's murder, his sister's kidnapping, Danny's sarin incident and Grace's abduction.

And now, with Danny's head injury.

He just about choked on his own spit when his cell phone rang from his cargo pants' pocket. He saw it was Five-0 HQ on the line, and thumbed the call on, praying he wasn't about to find out that the man in charge of keeping Danny alive was actually there to kill him as part of a Yakuza or Hiro-engineered plot against McGarrett or the whole of Five-0.

Yeah, he was paranoid, he admitted to himself as he said, "Talk to me, Chin." But hell, with the way his life had gone? He figured he had every right to be.


	8. Chapter 8

"_Steve, we seriously can't find so much as a parking ticket on Alan Noshimuri,"_ was what Chin had to tell him.

"_We finally got birth records for him and an Aron Noshimuri from Nagasaki,"_ Kono chimed in, clearly on speakerphone.

Chin continued. _"It looks like Alan and Aron are identical twins, born Koichi and Koji to Hiro and Aimi, March fourteenth, nineteen seventy-two in Omura, Nagasaki, Japan. Hiro and Aimi divorced when the twins were five-and-a-half years old."_

"Koji," Steve breathed, remembering Hiro's brother.

He heard some whispered voices, and then Kono picked up the conversation. _"From what we can tell, Aimi took the twins and moved back to somewhere in the Shizuoka Prefecture, about a seven-hour trip east of Nagasaki. She lived with her mother and father, caring for them and the twins while holding down a full-time teaching job."_

"_Steve, this is Malia. I've checked Alan Noshimuri's credentials. He and Aron attended some of the most prestigious schools in Japan while still under the names Koichi and Koji, but I can't find any reference to Koji after nineteen ninety-one. The brothers emigrated to the U.S. that year, changed their first names to be more Americanized, and Koji just dropped off the map. Koichi went through the medical training program at Harvard Medical, graduated with his American doctorate and began practicing as a brain surgeon in Manhattan."_

Steve rubbed his brow, stepping outside into the balmy evening air so Rachel and Grace wouldn't overhear the conversation. "All right, so if Alan, or Koichi, came to the States all those years ago, are you telling me he had no contact at all with his father? Even when he landed in Oahu right about—" Steve stopped himself short and went ramrod straight.

"_Steve?"_ Kono said uncertainly.

"He came to Oahu right before my father was murdered. Didn't he." It wasn't a question. Somehow, Steve just _knew_.

"_Yeah, that was the part I was getting to next,"_ Chin confirmed. _"According to flight records I managed to get into from Honolulu International, Alan Noshimuri flew in sixteen days before your father was killed by Hesse. But in looking into how it happened, it appears he was in talks with Longevity Institute International of the Pacific in Honolulu for five years before he actually came out to participate in their program as a neurosurgeon and researcher."_

Steve heard the pause which meant Chin had something else he wanted to say, but wasn't sure he should. "Chin," Steve prompted.

His friend sighed. _"Steve, sometimes a cigar's just a cigar."_

"You're telling me it's a coincidence that he shows up right before Dad's murdered," Steve said, feeling his face twist in fury. "And now that man, son to Hiro Noshimuri, who has a twin that's MIA, is responsible for keeping my partner alive. That's what you're telling me."

Goddamn unreal bullshit is what it all was.

"_Steve, I know you don't believe in coincidences, and frankly, I don't either. But Malia's checked into everything you told us about the diagnosis Noshimuri gave you, plus Kono managed to hack into Danny's medical records and Malia's gone over it with a fine-toothed comb. Everything checks out."_

Malia's voice came over the line next. _"I even got on the line with a friend of mine in Los Angeles, Dr. Amar at USC, and sent him the test results, the diagnosis and all of Noshimuri's notes. He confirmed that it's all right on the money and is actually interested in the outcome of the case."_

"This isn't a _case_, dammit, this is _Danny_!" Steve fumed, then clamped his mouth shut at the complete silence that greeted him from the other end of the call. "Shit. I'm sorry, Malia, guys, I'm sorry, okay? I'm just—I'm sorry."

"_Something's happened, hasn't it," _Kono said.

Yeah, Steve realized, he was _that_ transparent. "Danny woke up, was acting totally normal, demanding to see Grace." The cousins snickered. "I took her back to see him and he was fine. I swear to _God_, he was—"

"_Steve?"_ Malia interrupted quietly. _"What happened?"_

"He had a seizure while Grace was on his lap," he replied flatly, forcing himself to stay in control. No sense in losing his shit on top of everything else today.

"_Oh, my God, that poor kid," _Chin lamented. Steve could hear Charlie's, Malia's and Kono's clucks and groans of sympathy. _"How is he now?"_

"I don't know, the doctors hadn't come back out yet when you called. I'd better get back in there in case they do."

"_Is there anything else we can do?"_ Charlie asked.

Steve chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, mind racing. "Okay, here's what I need: if Malia's okay with it, I'd like her back here at the hospital, by my side every step of the way to make sure Noshimuri's doing right by Danny."

"_No problem, I'll be there as soon as I can,"_ Malia said.

"Now as for the rest of you, I want Danny's new apartment building inspected fully, I want every inch of those stairs checked and if you find so much as a cockroach within twenty feet of that place I want the owner hit hard."

Yes, it was petty. But Jesus Christ, for a cop to go down because of a staircase was just plain _stupid_, and if there were any building code violations to blame, Steve was going to make sure someone paid for what his partner was suffering through now. It was the one little thing he _did_ have control over, dammit.

"_I can handle that,"_ Chin said.

"Good. Kono, you and Charlie, you stay on the Noshimuri angle. I want a full forensic investigation into every phone call, every bit of internet usage, every piece of research, everywhere Alan Noshimuri slept, ate, got laid, the whole nine. Does he have a wife, does he have kids, but most of all, I have _got_ to know if he's been in touch with either Adam or Hiro at _all_ in the last ten years."

"_Boss, you want us to work the twin angle, too?"_

"You bet your ass I do," Steve confirmed, face steeling into what he knew Danny liked calling his Open Up A Can one. "If that twin is identical, and if he's fallen in with his father or Wo Fat or so much as a car thief on this island, I want to know about it. I want to know where the hell he disappeared to and why, and whether Alan's been in contact with him at all since ninety-one."

"_We're on it,"_ Kono replied.

"Thanks, guys. I mean it, really. Thanks."

"_Hey, Danny's _ohana_,"_ Chin reminded him. _"No lengths we won't go to for family."_

Steve smiled, thumbed the call closed and turned to head back in through the sliding doors of the ER. As he neared the vending machines, he caught sight of a man that looked like Alan Noshimuri exiting the public men's room and heading around the corner out of sight. Steve jogged to the T intersection of the hallway, but when he got there, not a single person was anywhere to be seen.

He ran down the hall, checking each and every one of the doors on either side, but they were all empty. Thinking he must have just been seeing things, with too much Noshimuri on the brain and too many emotions barely being held in check, he jogged back to the small waiting room they'd been in for _hours_ now.

Rachel was still seated on the uncomfortable plastic chairs, with a sleeping Grace held awkwardly in her arms. Every few seconds one of the lanky girl's legs or arms would slip out of place and Rachel struggled to pull it back without waking her daughter.

"Need a hand?" Steve asked softly, holding his hands out toward Grace palms-up.

"Thank you," Rachel said with a nod, her eyes red and puffy from crying. "My baby's getting a little too big to be held by Mummy anymore," she added with a watery smile.

"They tend to do that," Steve said, gently lifting the girl into his arms, cradling her against his chest as he took a seat a few chairs away. "I've got her for now, maybe they have some decent tea in that vending machine over there."

Rachel smiled at him, fully aware he was remembering her English preference for tea; that he was trying to ease her burden with Grace, and with what was happening with Danny. With the fact that she had a newborn at home she wasn't able to see to, and the fact that she was no longer the Number One adult in Danny's life.

She smiled ruefully, as certain as he probably was that there wouldn't be a decent cup of tea anywhere in the hospital, staff cafeteria included, but needing to get up and stretch her arms and legs and work out the kinks of having stayed in one position for too long.

"I'll let you know, and if they do, shall I bring you a cup?"

"I'd like that," he said, but his attention was fully on Grace. He smoothed back a stray bit of brown hair from her forehead, ran his finger down along her cheek and then settled into the chair, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes.

Rachel smiled at the pair, not really understanding until that moment how much Steve McGarrett really and truly cared about her and Danny's daughter. She didn't know if it could be attributed to Danny's deep love for her just rubbing off on his partner, or if Steve had fallen for the girl as hard as Danny had at first sight.

Either way, she knew that when both Danny and Grace were with this man, they were in very capable, very caring hands and really, what more could a mother want for her child? In that instant, she understood _ohana_. She was seeing it with her own two eyes.

"Steve," she said softly. He opened his eyes and raised his head to look at her. "I'm afraid Stanley, Jr. is due for a feeding and, well…" She shifted uncomfortably and the color rose on Steve's cheeks.

"Go ahead. I've got Grace. I'll take good care of her, Rachel."

"You're certain. I don't want to be a burden."

Suddenly words Danny had said once five or six months back came into Steve's mind. Something he'd yelled to Rachel over the phone in the car once while they were driving from one end of Oahu to the other interrogating suspects on a case.

"_Grace could never be a burden to anyone, least of all to me!"_

Steve figured it probably wouldn't behoove him to repeat that to Rachel here and now, like kicking someone when they're down, so he just said, "You're not, Rachel. Really. Chin's wife, Malia, will be joining us here soon, so if Grace needs anything I can't help her with, we've got Malia."

She chewed on her lip uncertainly for a moment, then nodded once. "All right. Thank you. I'll be back as soon as I can."

"No problem, take your time. I'll keep you updated."

"Thank you, Steve. I mean it. For…for everything."

Steve smiled, nodded, leaned his head back against the wall again and closed his eyes while Grace Williams slept on in his arms.

He didn't know if he and Catherine would ever settle down enough to have children of their own. But if they didn't, he guessed he couldn't get any closer to it with anyone better than Gracie. He clutched her just a little bit closer, and in spite of the worry plaguing his mind, drifted slowly off to sleep.

Maybe there was something to be said for those Grace-induced endorphins Danny was always talking about after all.


	9. Chapter 9

_Danny watched as the doctor ushered his partner out into the hallway. He knew he should know the doctor's name, but it wouldn't come to mind for the life of him, and he supposed it didn't matter anyway, because Steve was taking care of things like Steve always did._

_Or tried to, anyway._

_He supposed for the sake of form, he should grouse to Steve that being made his next-of-kin didn't mean Steve was in charge of Danny's entire life, but he was tired and not really feeling up to a rant, and his baby girl was lying in the crook of his arm drawing patterns absentmindedly against his stupid paisley-and-flower-covered hospital gown._

_She kept looking up at him and her body was stiff, like she was tense, but he wasn't sure why that would be. He was fine, although…strangely…he couldn't remember exactly what'd happened to land him in the hospital this time._

_Odd. You'd think he'd remember._

_Why was Gracie so tense? And why was Steve glaring at the Japanese-looking doctor? Why were Steve's arms folded defensively over his chest like he was about to open up a can on a nasty suspect? Why did Grace keep looking up at him like that, as though she expected him to spontaneously combust? What wasn't he remembering?_

_Then a flash of light caught his peripheral. Steve's eyes were huge and round. The glint of light came from something in the doctor's hand. Something metal. Something silver._

_A gun!_

_Danny tried to yell, tried to cry out, tried to warn his partner. After all, it was his job to have Steve's back, and he saw the gun, the gun pointed right at Steve! And…and Grace was here, Grace was in danger from this doctor, this doctor, who was he? Why did he have a gun pointed at Steve, why?_

_The the gun went off._

_Steve fell._

_Horrified at what he'd seen, and terrified for Grace's safety, Danny tried to yell for help, but he couldn't. And then there was a blinding flash of pain, and Danny saw no more._

* * *

><p>"…Garrett."<p>

Steve stirred. He felt a weight in his arms and wasn't sure for a moment what it was.

"Lieutenant Commander McGarrett."

Then a hand touched his arm and his eyes blinked wide open. The man touching him, who jumped back a little when he woke, was Dr. Ma. He looked down. The weight in his arms was a still-slumbering Grace.

Someone else was there. A quick look to his right confirmed it was Malia. He gave her a small smile, which she returned as she placed the magazine she'd been flipping through down onto the room's one small wooden table.

"I'm sorry to awaken you, Mr. McGarrett, but your partner is once again awake and coherent, though highly agitated. He's demanding to see you, but not yet his daughter."

Steve tried to keep Grace as still as possible as he hiked himself and her up off the hard plastic chair. Malia gestured to him that she would take the girl, and Steve knew that Grace had met and talked with Malia, so at least she wouldn't be with a stranger when she woke.

So he nodded and gently transferred her to Malia's waiting arms. Grace stirred a little, but soon was snuggled right into Malia's small frame and dozing soundly again. "I'll be right back," Steve whispered, and Malia nodded.

Back through the stupid swinging double doors.

Down the same hall.

Turning the same corner.

This time, though, Dr. Ma stopped and turned with a hand raised in the air. "Mr. McGarrett, we've completed a second battery of tests which include a three-sixty X-ray, a CT scan, an MRI and cognitive tests. Everything from Detective Williams' eyesight to his hearing to his speech to his recognition of shapes and objects to his deductive reasoning skills has been checked out."

Steve frowned. "You're kidding. How long was I out for?"

"I'm not sure, but it's been four hours since the seizure Mr. Williams experienced while you and Grace were here."

Steve scrubbed a hand down his face. Four _hours_? He shook his head in disbelief that he'd slept at _all_, let alone that long, and that apparently Danny had been awake for a while without him knowing it.

"Now, he's passed every single test with flying colors except for the fact that the trauma to the uncinate area of his brain is still evident in these latest scans and actually seems to have spread beyond where the first scans showed."

"Spread," Steve repeated. "I don't understand. Did he hit his head again when he was convulsing?"

"No, we were all right there. Yes, he was thrashing, but his head didn't come into contact with anything other than the pillows behind it. Dr. Noshimuri is currently on a conference call with some colleagues trying to find out if there's precedent for severe TBI to actually spread without further trauma occurring to the frontal or temporal lobes, in Detective Williams' case."

"Excuse me," Steve said, shaking his head because he _hated_ not fully understanding what was being said, "TBI?"

"My apologies. Traumatic Brain Injury. The one your partner has is classified as severe because he was unconscious for longer than thirty minutes, and because of the epileptic seizures we've witnessed twice now."

Steve felt his heart skip several beats. Traumatic brain injury. Seizures. Not good for a cop. To hell with that. Not good for _Danny_. "What is he looking at here? Is going to become permanently epileptic, or…what?"

"There's simply no way of telling. I'm hopeful that Dr. Noshimuri will return to us with further information after his consultation, but until then…" Ma's voice trailed off as he held his hands out in front of him with an unspoken _we just don't know_.

Something Steve did _not_ want to hear. "Did he say why he doesn't want to see his daughter right now?"

"I'm afraid that when he awoke, he wondered why she wasn't in his lap. It's the last thing he remembered, and he wanted to know who'd taken her away, and why. So the nurse told him he'd begun convulsing while she was in his arms, and he became very upset."

"Dr. Ma," Steve said after gritting his teeth through the explanation, "I would appreciate it if the nurses didn't volunteer any other information to Danny in any way, shape or form, _especially_ if it has to do with Grace."

"I'll relay the message, but of course I can't guarantee anything."

Steve stepped right up into the shorter man's personal space. "I'm asking you for a guarantee."

Of course, the way Dr. Ma gulped showed he knew damn well that Steve wasn't asking anything. He was _telling_. "Right," Ma said. "I'll give the two of you ten minutes alone, and then I need to hook Mr. Williams back up to the brain monitoring system. We will also be talking with him about implanting a Brain Monitoring Device should it become apparent that he may experience further seizures or other symptoms from this event, but we'll cross that bridge when and if we come to it."

"Thank you," Steve said with a nod, backing away so the doctor could go about his business. Shit, he really shouldn't treat the guy badly. After all, he was doing his best for Danny as, apparently, was Alan Noshimuri.

He really needed to check in with Kono and Charlie on that front, but first, Danny.

So he walked into Danny's room, but this time, Danny's face didn't light up like a Christmas tree. This time he looked…well, he looked _scared_.

"Steve," he said, voice sounding way smaller than Danny Williams' voice had _ever_ sounded to Steve's ears, "what's happening to me?"

What the hell could Steve tell him? What the hell was he supposed to say? He couldn't think of _anything_. No words seemed right, no sentiment seemed adequate. He knew Danny was killing himself worrying about his daughter, about what she'd had to witness when he'd seized. He knew Danny was trying to understand what this injury meant and whether it would end his career, life as he knew it, their partnership, his time with Five-0, the team.

Whether it would kill him.

Steve managed to shake his head just a little, and Danny's eyes lowered to the white sheet covering most of his body. Before Steve could even try to work up a handful of words to try and make the man feel better, though, there was a sound at the door behind him. He turned to find Dr. Noshimuri standing there with a smile on his face.

He expected the man to tell them he'd found a miraculous cure for what ailed Danny.

Or he expected, at the very least, to be told he'd found some more answers and could give them more information than they currently had.

The one thing he didn't expect was the gut-wrenching bellow that came from his partner. "Steve, _look out_!"

That's when Steve saw the gun.

That's when Steve went down.


	10. Chapter 10

Steve shook his head, trying to clear the stars swimming around it. It took him half a second to register that Danny was sprawled on top of him, doing his best to use his five-foot-five frame to completely cover Steve's own six-foot-plus-a-bit. Then he looked up as shouting came from the corridor. Footfalls grew further and further away, and Noshimuri was nowhere to be seen.

"Danny!" Steve exclaimed, trying to turn under the weight of his partner.

"No, no, no, he's going to kill you, I saw it, I _saw_ it!" Danny shouted into the back of Steve's shirt.

"Do…what? Danny, come on, get off me."

"No, have to protect you, he's going to kill you!"

Steve was actually starting to freak out a little bit. "Danno, you need to get off me. Noshimuri's gone, it's safe now, but I need to get up."

"Noshimuri?" Danny asked, surprise evident in his voice as he reared back from the hold he'd had around Steve's chest. "As in Hiro?"

"Wha—no…well…sort of. Look, if you promise to get off me, and get back into bed, I'll explain. Don't you remember being introduced to your brain surgeon?"

Steve finally managed to flip himself so that instead of sitting on his ass, Danny was now straddling his pelvis and, okay, this was new. Danny seemed to realize it at the same time, rolled his eyes, and got to his feet, which stayed planted either side of McGarrett's legs. He held a hand out and Steve made to take it for the help up, then realized something.

"Danny, you shouldn't…did you leap out of that bed and _tackle_ me to the floor? You've got a _head_ injury!"

"Yes, and his name is Lieutenant Commander Steven J. McGarrett, now would you just…" Instead of finishing his sentence, Danny leaned down, grabbed one of Steve's hands and hauled him to his feet like he weighed no more than Grace, with absolutely no effort at all.

Steve just _stared_ at him, a little dizzy from having been moved so fast without warning.

Danny, with Steve's hand still in his, stared at the union like he, too, had just figured out what he'd done. "You still weigh more than me, right?" he asked.

"Far as I know, unless you were into the coco puffs in the week I was gone," Steve replied.

Their eyes met and for a long moment neither of them spoke. "Steve?"

"Yeah."

"Did I just…do that?"

"Ummm...yeah?"

Steve bit his lip as Danny let go of his hand, turned, and went back to perch on the side of the bed.

Dr. Ma came rushing into the room. "Mr. Williams, what are you—?"

"Did you catch Noshimuri?" Steve asked, stopping Ma with a hand to the front of his chest.

"What? We weren't trying to catch him, we were trying to catch a man who'd knocked out one of our other doctors and stolen his lab coat and ID."

"Noshimuri stood right here in the doorway and pulled a _gun_ on me!"

"_What_?" Ma asked. "But he's still in the video conference room."

"Go check," Steve said, eyes boring into the doctor's. "And take security guards with you. I'm getting HPD and my team here on the double."

"Grace," Danny said from the bed. "Where's Grace?"

"With Malia in the waiting room," Steve replied. "Danny, what…what _happened_?"

"I don't know. I just…when I saw his face, I suddenly remembered seeing him pull a gun on you in the hall, seeing him shoot you."

"You saw him shoot me?" Danny nodded, the look on his face telling Steve they were equally confused. "I need to call the team," Steve said, pulling his cell phone out. "And go out and check on Grace."

"I'm coming with you," Danny said, and only then did Steve notice the trickle of blood running down Danny's arm where the IV had been torn out when he leapt from the bed.

"You need to stay _here_, Danny, there's…there's something wrong with…you have a _brain_ injury, you're not going _anywhere_."

Suddenly Ma reappeared in the doorway, and right next to him stood Noshimuri. Steve drew his weapon even as Danny stood at full height next to his partner. No weapon, but definitely murder in his eyes.

"Whoa, whoa, McGarrett, what's the meaning of this?" Alan asked as both doctors raised their hands in the air.

Steve jerked his head at him. "I don't know, why don't you tell me why you pulled a gun on me a few minutes ago?"

"A gun?" Alan repeated, and Steve was surprised to find he actually believed the shocked look on the man's face. "I did nothing of the sort. I don't even _own_ a gun."

Steve's eyes darted down to where the doctor's white lab coat hung open and he stared in disbelief.

"Steve?" Danny said, noting the look on his partner's face.

"His clothes," Steve murmured, taking in Noshimuri's shoes, pants, and the portion of his shirt that could be seen under the coat.

"What about them?"

Steve re-holstered his weapon. "They're not the same as the ones the man who pulled his gun on me was wearing."

And suddenly, Steve knew exactly why that was. He went up to Noshimuri, grabbed him by the lapels of his lab coat, hauled him into the room and pushed him _hard_ up against the nearest wall. "Where is your twin brother Aron?" he growled, forearm holding Alan to the wall by the neck. "And don't lie to me, because I can tell you for a fact that he just tried to _kill_ me standing _right_ here in this hospital, so you'd better start telling the truth and you'd better start _now_."

Ma ran to call the police.

Danny came to stand by Steve's side.

Steve tried to keep from killing this son of Hiro.

All just as Malia and Grace walked through the door.

"Danno?"

"Monkey?"

"Oh!" Malia exclaimed when she saw what Steve was doing. She tried to pull Grace back out into the hall, but the little girl would not be dissuaded from finding her father's arms, and jerked away, making it to Danny in less than a second.

Danny picked her up, wondering why she seemed to weigh absolutely _nothing_, and went into the hall with her, gown flapping open behind him.

"Steve?" Malia said.

Steve looked to his left, saw the somewhat frightened look on her face, and only then realized Alan Noshimuri was gasping for air. He released his hold but didn't move from the man's personal space. "Get Chin here," he said to Malia. "And Kono and Charlie, too, and if Dr. Ma hasn't already got HPD on their way, I want them here on the double. Have the hospital locked down and I mean _now_."

Malia nodded and ran out into the hall.

"Steve?" Danny called from that direction.

"Yeah?" he called back.

"You done being a caveman yet?"

"When Alan starts talking, then maybe," Steve replied as Danny peeked in.

"I hadn't heard from my brother Aron since nineteen ninety-one," Alan said, rubbing his neck after taking a few deep gulps of air. He looked at Williams and then McGarrett before adding, "Until one hour ago."

Steve glared at the man. "One hour ago? Did he call you?"

"No," Alan said with a shake of his head. "A text message, calling me by my given name, Konichi, which no one in America knows but him." He reached into his pants pocket slowly, Steve watching every move. He pulled out his cell phone, opened it and fiddled with the desktop for a moment before turning the phone around and showing the screen to Steve.

Steve, whose face drained of all color when he read what was on it.

"What?" Danny asked, deciding to hell with it, and coming back into the room still holding his girl in his arms. "What's it say?"

Steve swallowed hard. "It says, 'Our father sends his love, Konichi. See you very soon.'"

"I don't understand," Danny said, not having been around for any of what the other half of their team had uncovered about Alan and Aron Noshimuri thus far. "Are you saying this man," he pointed at Alan, "has a twin brother, and that they're the sons of Hiro Noshimuri, who escaped back to Japan with Joe White's help?"

"That's about it," Steve said.

"So…the twin was trying to kill you?"

Alan's cell phone chimed an incoming text message. He read it, then turned the screen to face both partners. When the men saw what it said, their eyes met and Danny held Grace just that much tighter.

_Watch your back. It's not over yet. Brother._


	11. Chapter 11

Because Steve refused to allow Danny to leave the hospital; because the cousins and their significant others and even _ex_-significant others like Rachel backed him up one hundred percent on this; because the hospital was currently on lock-down (thank God Duke was there to keep things organized at the moment), the group consisting of Five-0 and then some was gathered in Danny's hospital room trying to figure out what the ever-loving fuck was going on.

"Recap," Steve said as Rachel finally got Grace to let go of her father long enough to go to the bathroom right there in the room, "Alan Noshimuri is Hiro's son. His twin brother Aron, AKA Koji, is apparently in league with their father to do me in."

"Why's it always you?" Danny muttered, drawing a nasty glare from Steve. But it _did_ make the tension in his partner's shoulders bleed out a little, which was always why Danny said shit like that in the first place.

"Danny's head injury gave Koji the in he needed to kill two birds with one stone. Take out me, blame it on you," he gestured to Alan, "and get away scot-free with no one any the wiser."

"Except we knew," Chin pointed out. "A guy like Hiro Noshimuri has to know we hacked some files and found out about his twin sons. Aron might even have known."

"And if he does know, that means we're _all_ targets now," Steve said grimly. "He won't want to leave anyone behind who can finger him for murder."

"Do you really think Aron's doing this under Hiro's orders?" Kono asked, a frown puckering her brow. "I mean, Joe helped Hiro escape the country. Why would Hiro repay him by going after someone Joe considers a son?"

Steve looked at her for a moment, thoughts of Joe and how to this day he didn't really know whether he could trust him or not filling his mind.

"Hey," Danny said softly, coming up to stand so close that the short hairs on their arms were brushing against each other. He smirked when he saw it made goosebumps rise on Steve's arm. "You considered maybe Aron's _not_ doing this under his dad's orders?"

"You read the text messages, Danny," Steve said, jerking his arm away and beginning to pace what little of the room was open enough to do so. "He sent greetings to Alan from their father."

"Misdirection," came Rachel's lilting voice from near the bathroom door as she watched Grace wash her hands in the sink.

"What?" Steve blinked.

"Misdirection," Rachel repeated, motioning for Grace to take one of the hand towels folded on a cart just inside the bathroom door. She turned to find everyone looking right at her.

"Yeah," Danny said with a nod and a wink at his ex-wife. "If the twin knew you were on to him, he'd play the Father Card so you'd go after Hiro and maybe even Joe, rather than who's really behind it all."

"Fuck," Steve said, quietly enough that Grace wouldn't hear. "Wo Fat."

"Bingo," Chin said with a shake of his head. "Damn."

"Wo Fat enlisted Aron's help. He could even have been the reason Aron disappeared in '91 after he and Alan immigrated to the U.S." Steve turned to look at Alan. "What exactly happened immediately before and after your brother disappeared?"

Noshimuri crossed his arms over his chest and looked thoughtfully down at the floor before responding. "We had completely passed through all the legally required Customs and paperwork circles within the space of two days," he recalled. "Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. We were both very excited to be coming here. Aron had talked of reconnecting with our father, but at the time neither of us knew where in the U.S. he was." He shook his head. "When I awoke in the hotel room on the morning of the third day, he was gone, along with all his clothing, toiletries, his suitcase." Alan waved a hand in the air, then his shoulders slumped. "I never heard from him until that text message I showed you, Mr. McGarrett."

The group was interrupted by Duke entering the room and motioning for Five-0 to follow him into the hall. They did, gathering closely around him.

"My men, including two SWAT teams, have searched every inch of this hospital, Steve," he reported, shaking his head. "There's no sign of anyone who looks like that man," he finished, pointing to Alan, who was currently deep in conversation with Malia.

"He probably had an escape route memorized," Kono offered. "He could've been in here before, masquerading as his brother. Nobody would think anything other than that Dr. Noshimuri was on-site for a patient visit or consultation if they saw him."

"Yeah, I think you're right," Steve nodded. He turned to look at the two officers guarding Danny's room, one stationed on either side of the door. "I need to keep them here, and I want four more of your best men, two equidistant either side of this room about halfway down the hall. Eyes and ears on at _all_ times."

Duke nodded. "You got it. Anything else?"

Steve looked at him for a moment, then felt Danny nudge his arm. "What's that face, you've got a face on."

"I don't have a _face_, Danny," Steve growled. But Danny just grinned at him. "All right, fine. You can call this my Thinking Face."

"Oh, please, that one was used the first day we met," he snorted. "But seriously, what are you thinking?"

Steve wasn't sure still that he liked how well Danny could read him, but he appreciated what his partner was trying to do. "I was thinking about you, actually."

Danny grinned. "Of course you were. I'm hard _not_ to think about."

"Especially with all that hand-waving. You're going to give yourself another head injury, _brah_," Kono teased.

"Look, you," Danny threatened, mock-punching her arm.

"Duke, I think that's it for now, but I'd like you to stay on site, and coordinate a second search of the entire hospital and grounds, as well as get me any information from witnesses who saw Aron. Have they pulled up the surveillance footage yet?"

"They should have. I'll take a look and get anything relevant to you as soon as it comes through."

"Thanks," Steve said, placing his hand on Duke's shoulder.

"Sure thing," Duke said, then looked at Danny. "I'm glad you're doing okay, by the way."

"Me too," Danny said, though the look on his face told Steve that wasn't necessarily truthful somehow.

"That's actually why I was thinking about you," Steve said, picking up their conversation where they'd left off. "Danny, when you tackled me to keep Aron from shooting me, you kept repeating that you saw him shoot me, and you told me that later, too. What did you mean by that?"

Danny bit his lip, looked down at the floor and shrugged. "It…I don't know. A…dream, I guess?"

"Dream?" Chin repeated, stepping closer to his friend and teammate. "What do you mean, like a premonition?"

"Wait, you dreamed that Steve was going to get shot and then he almost did?" Kono asked. "That's _cool_."

Danny blinked at her. "Yeah, I guess, but…" His voice trailed off and he shook his head. "Look, I don't get any of this. All I know is that I dreamed I was in the hospital bed, Grace was with me, but she was real tense, like she was scared I was going to suddenly blow up or something."

"She was really upset after the last time you convulsed, worried it was going to happen again."

"You know, that's something else. This isn't the first dream I've had, but the other one is fuzzy."

"Okay, first the one where you saw me shot."

Danny nodded and kept chewing on his lip, then finally explained as best he could. "Like I said, Grace and I were in that bed right there, and Dr. Noshimuri was leading you into the hall to talk to you. You seemed defensive, though, like he was a suspect more than he was my doctor. Thing was, I couldn't remember his name to save my life, and I couldn't move. Then I saw the gun and he shot you."

Danny whirled, paced down the hall a few steps, then turned back. His eyes had gone dark; his face, troubled. Steve glanced at Chin and Kono, then moved toward his partner. "Danny?"

"I couldn't _move_, I couldn't even _yell_, Steve! You went down and I couldn't _stop_ it, I couldn't protect my _daughter_."

"Hey, hey, whoa, you did, though. Right? You did, when Aron actually showed up, you saved me, Danny." Steve was holding his hands out like he was trying to approach a skittish animal, which Danny very much resembled at the moment.

Eyes tearing up, Danny looked away. "Yeah, I guess. But…I just don't…" He looked back at his partner helplessly.

"Tell me about the other dream, the first one," Steve said softly, hands dropping to his sides.

Danny rubbed at his nose, the tip of which, as it always did when he was upset and near tears, had turned pink. "I was flying," he whispered so quietly Steve couldn't hear.

"You were what?"

"Flying, Steven," Danny repeated, eyes daring him to do anything other than listen quietly. Steve got the hint. "And I thought I must've been in Jersey, because the sun wasn't hot like it is here. Then Grace was there, and she was reaching for me but someone pulled her away and she started crying, and—"

Danny's voice broke. Steve couldn't think of anything to do but reach out and pull his best friend into a hug. He turned to look down the hall, noting with relief and unending gratitude that the cousins had gone back into the room to keep everyone else distracted long enough that Danny and Steve could do their thing, and that they'd pulled the HPD officers inside with them.

Their thing. He and Danny were always doing a 'thing' of some sort, Steve mused.

"Danny, did you see who took Grace away from you?" Steve asked, releasing his partner and backing away a respectable distance.

"No," Danny whispered. "But then you were there, and you got down on one knee like you always do when you greet her. She wrapped her arms around your neck and you picked her up and held her, then…then you turned so I could see your face." Danny looked up and met Steve's eyes. "And _you_ were crying."

Steve stared at him, swallowed hard, and found he didn't have any spit. Danny dreams Noshimuri's going to shoot Steve, and then it almost happens? And now this? This…holy shit.

"Steve? You look like you've just seen a damn ghost or something."

"That really happened," Steve breathed, his entire world trying desperately to re-align itself around this new information.

"What are you talking about? _What_ really happened?"

Steve did a three-sixty in place, running a hand through his hair before meeting Danny's eyes again. "You started seizing when Grace was on your lap. A nurse pulled her off you, she was crying, and…that thing with me, and picking up Grace, and…it all happened, Danny, just like you saw."

"Even…" Danny waved a hand near his own eyes, then gestured towards Steve's. "You know."

Steve's gaze didn't waver. "Yeah. Even that."

For the first time in his life, Danny Williams couldn't think of a goddamn thing to say.


	12. Chapter 12

Steve hadn't a fucking clue.

That Danny had known Grace was going to be torn away from him; that he'd seen Steve and Grace cling to each other. That he'd seen Steve _cry_, all before it actually happened.

And then that he'd seen Aron Noshimuri kill Steve, unable to do a damn thing about it. Yet while the first so-called dream Danny described seemed to be an exact portent of what occurred when he'd had his seizure, the second one wasn't quite right. First, because Grace was with Danny in his dream, and yet she hadn't been there when Aron had drawn the gun.

"Oh, my God," Steve breathed, rubbing a hand down his face and looking at Danny like he'd just figured out the Secret to the Universe.

Danny just looked at him quizzically, not entire sure he knew what to do with all this any more than Steve did.

"You changed it, Danny."

"I…what?"

"Don't you see? The first dream you had, things happened exactly as you dreamed them, with Grace and me," Steve said, hands starting to wave around as he warmed to the idea. "But in the second dream, you said Grace was lying in bed with you. Danny, she wasn't with you when Aron pulled the gun on me in reality."

"Because I asked to see you _without_ her," Danny said, picking up on the path Steve was headed down. "I didn't want her in the room because I didn't want a repeat performance. I didn't want her to see me that way again."

"No, Danny, I don't think so. I think you didn't want her to come with me because you subconsciously _knew_ if she wasn't in the room, I wouldn't get shot."

"You didn't get _shot_ because in spite of a head injury, I'm faster than a speeding bullet."

Steve blinked at him. "Well, you're certainly _stronger_."

Danny narrowed his eyes at him. "What say we test that theory?"

"How?"

Danny looked up and down the hall, shrugged, and said, "Let me try to carry you."

Steve fought the urge to smile. "What, like, over the threshold?"

"Yes, after I've _brained_ you."

Steve snorted. "You think you can carry me."

"Only one way to find out," Danny challenged.

"Okay, fine," Steve relented, relaxing his stance and letting his hands fall to his sides. "Have at it."

Clearly, Steve didn't believe this would happen any more than Danny did, but what the hell. Danny walked right up to him and had him in a fireman's carry so fast it made Steve's head spin.

"You don't weigh a damn thing. You sure you're eating right? Damn Navy training got you thin as a rail," he groused, walking down the hall a ways.

"I weigh a pound less than I did when I left for the _Enterprise_," Steve said, folding his arms across Danny's back, elbows purposely digging into his partner's shoulder blades. He expected Danny to bitch at him about the pain, then unceremoniously throw him to the floor.

But Danny didn't.

So Steve dug his elbows in a little harder, then yelped as Danny grabbed hold of his waist and hoisted him into the air above his head in some sort of fucked up _Cirque du Soleil_ maneuver.

"Holy shit," Steve and Danny breathed at the same time.

"Uh…put me down?" Steve asked.

"Yeah. Right," Danny said, eyes wide as he carefully, easily set Steve down on his own two feet. "The fuck?"

"I don't know, but I have another theory."

"Oh, do tell."

But Steve didn't say anything. He just reached and pinched Danny's arm. _Hard_.

Danny made to say, "Ow," but stopped before any sound could come out. "Why didn't that hurt?"

"Pain. You don't feel pain?"

Danny scowled, walked over to the wall and kicked it so hard with his foot that Steve was sure he'd broken something vital. But Danny just stood there, perfectly balanced on his left foot, while studying his seemingly unharmed right foot like it belonged to an alien.

"I don't feel so good," Danny finally said, looking very much like he was turning green.

Steve was instantly by his side, arm around his back. "Seizure?"

"What? No, I don't…Steve, I don't…oh, God…"

Danny sagged in his arms. "Doctor!" Steve hollered back down the hall toward Danny's room. Instantly every single person once in there was now in the hall, with Chin, Kono, Dr. Ma and Alan Noshimuri leading the way.

"What happened?" Ma asked, checking Danny's vitals.

"Woozy," Danny said, voice slurring. "Feel drunk."

"Daddy?"

Suddenly realizing his little girl was watching all this, Danny forced himself to stand on his own two feet, opening his arms to his daughter. She carefully approached him and held onto him tightly, _so_ tightly, as he bent forward to rest his forehead on the top of her head.

"Danny?" Rachel said tentatively.

"I'm okay," Danny said, a bald-faced lie if ever there was one.

"We should get you back to your room," Noshimuri advised. "I think at the very least you should be lying down and resting."

"Resting?" Danny said, standing up straight but not letting go of his Grace. "Resting, he tells me, Steven," he continued, gesturing one-handed at the doctor. "Resting, when I find out I can carry my partner over my head like he's nothing more than a feather and can apparently see and change the future. And he wants me to rest."

"I think it's a good idea, D."

"Of course you do, just to be contrary," Danny groused. "Fine. But only if Grace is with me."

The little girl smiled brilliantly up at him, and the father and daughter made their way back to the room, followed by Dr. Ma who was going to make sure they stayed there.

"Lift you over his head?" Kono asked, eyebrow raised. "Now _that_ I'd like to see."

"What did he mean about seeing the future?" Rachel asked.

"And changing it?" Chin chimed in.

"I've heard of this sort of phenomenon before," Noshimuri said. "Lieutenant Commander, what else has changed for the detective since his head injury?"

"Pain," Steve said. "I pinched him, and I mean hard, and then he kicked that wall over there. It was like nothing had happened. He didn't feel a thing."

"How is that possible?" Malia asked, eyes large and round in disbelief.

"Anything's possible where our brains are concerned," Alan explained. "So much of what it's capable of, human beings never actually tap into."

"This is crazy," Steve said. "You're telling us what, here, that Danny's psychic, and has become some sort of…Jersey Superman or something in the bargain because he fell down the _stairs_?"

"Because he injured an area of the brain we know very little about, Mr. McGarrett," Noshimuri corrected gently. "I would very much like to run some more tests, see how strong he is, how much pain he can endure, and figure out if we can identify the regions of his brain that are most active during these dreams he has. I also would like to find out if the seizures have anything to do with those dreams."

"Over my dead body," Steve growled, making Noshimuri stop short and look at him in surprise. "The man in that room is _not_ a lab rat. He's a father, he's a cop and he's _my_ partner, and you're not turning him into your next medical journal paper, you got me?"

Alan held his hands up defensively. "I only wish to document his condition, so I can attempt to diagnose precisely what his injuries may or may not cause to happen in the future, Mr. McGarrett."

Steve's eyes narrowed, and his arms went over his chest. Chin and Kono knew that meant _no fucking with me_, but Alan didn't.

"I don't want to turn him into a lab experiment," Noshimuri continued. "But surely you must understand the opportunity Detective Williams is presenting here for us to understand more about the human brain that might help others who experience similar injuries."

Steve was torn. He desperately wanted to know if Danny was going to be okay, they _all _did. Would the seizures continue, would the damaged area of his brain spread more than it already had, would there be long-term side effects, potentially deadly ones…could he see _everything_ that had to do with the future, or only _bad_ things? Or maybe only things that had to do with Grace, or Steve. Or maybe _both_ of them, as both dreams so far had contained both of them.

Ultimately, with Danny awake and cognizant enough to make his own decisions, it was up to him and not Steve. But Steve was afraid that Danny's desire to help his fellow man might just wind up causing his early demise, and that was something he couldn't stand by and just let happen.

He was snapped out of his thoughts by a sound that was all-too-familiar. And all-too-frightening.

The rattling of a metal bed frame.

The cry of a nine-year old girl.

The shout of a doctor.

_Oh, no_.

Danny was seizing again.


	13. Chapter 13

This time, Grace was inconsolable. Between that and Rachel's infant son currently being looked after at home by a combination of Stan and their nanny, Rachel was at her wits' end. She knew that while there was nowhere else she'd rather be than here where Danny was fighting something no one understood, where he and his partner were desperately trying to find answers about this Noshimuri character, her children's best interests were to have all of them be safe and sound at home.

Stanley, Jr. needed his mom in a way no one else could provide, and Grace needed to not see her father convulsing, nor to overhear the dire conversations of the Five-0 team and Danny's doctors. And if something _did_ happen, if Noshimuri somehow made it back into the hospital, how would Grace being there, watching her Uncle Steve or her father get shot – possibly even being targeted her_self_ – help anyone?

It wouldn't. And so she entered Danny's room, having left a sobbing Grace with Malia and Kono in the waiting room. She took note of Steve standing in the far corner, eyes trained on Danny, arms folded defensively across his chest. A sentinel was the first thing it brought to her mind. Steve standing guard, doing the only thing he had control over at this moment, which was watching his partner's back.

She looked at her still, pale ex-husband. The doctors had hooked him back up to all the monitoring equipment, had reinserted an IV line, this time with medication added to try and control the seizures, and he looked dead save for the rise and fall of his chest.

Rachel simply didn't have any more tears left to cry. This wasn't her territory anymore, this bedside worrying, and yet she couldn't tear herself away. That brought to mind what her daughter had told her not too many weeks ago, about how her Danno was dating someone new that he'd met because of his work. Someone named…what was it again…Dr. Asano? Yes, that was it. Dr. Asano.

"Is Daniel still seeing a Dr. Asano?" she asked, hands firmly gripping the metal railing of the bed.

Steve's eyes snapped to her in surprise.

"Don't worry, I'm not trying to pry. I just thought…well, if they're involved…perhaps she should be notified of…" Her voice trailed off as she looked down at this man who was never _ever_ this still. "Once he was shot in the line of duty while we were still just dating," she confessed, hand reaching out to hold Danny's. "I wasn't notified because we weren't even engaged at that point. He didn't show up or call for four days. I was worried sick. There he was, I found out five days later, lying in a hospital bed fighting for his life, and if he'd died, I wouldn't have been there for him."

"Danny's not going to die," Steve said firmly, though she wasn't altogether certain whether he believed it, or was trying to convince them _both_ of it.

She looked up to find he was standing right next to her. "I know," she whispered. "But if she loves him, she has a right to know. I know what it's like to be in her shoes." Rachel squeezed Danny's hand. "Please take care of him," she said, meeting and holding Steve's eyes. "Grace and I are depending on you for that."

Steve swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. "I'll do everything I can to make sure he stays around for you."

She cocked her head at him. "And for you, I would imagine."

Steve just looked at her. She released her ex-husband's hand, turned and left Danny's room to collect her daughter from the waiting room and take her home. She heard Steve behind her in the hall telling Duke to put two black-and-whites on the Edwards family, one to be inside the house at all times, one out in back, and a surveillance van out in front of their estate.

Rachel felt like she might smile at the directive, but she wasn't even able to conjure one up. Danny was right about one thing where his partner was concerned: he was a control freak. In this particular case, Rachel was infinitely grateful for that fact.

* * *

><p>Ah, there was the familiar Jersey sunshine, much cooler and less bright than the Hawaiian one. No, that wasn't right. Jersey was hot as hell in the summertime. So maybe this was winter. Yes, it must be winter in Jersey, and yet…he wasn't cold.<p>

And he was flying again.

Only this time, he felt like he really _was_ flying, high above the earth only wait, this wasn't right at all. What was beneath him was jungle-like, not paved streets and skyscrapers. That meant he still had to be in Hawaii, and where was Grace, anyway? Last time she'd flown with him, and…and Danny couldn't remember any more than that.

So he just flew and flew, and then he saw beneath him a bright silver glint of light and looked down. There was his car, zooming along the Lunalilo Freeway headed toward where it intersected the 63, a black-and-white in front of it and behind it. He snorted to himself as he thought, O_f course, here I am expending all this energy flying and there's my partner driving my car as _usual.

Only why was he flying? _Could_ he fly? Grace could, right? They were Williamses, of course they could. Steve wasn't, so he couldn't. That seemed logical.

Then there was an explosion. He heard it. He even felt its heat, though he was far, far above the ground.

He just kept flying, and craned his neck down and back to see what'd happened. All that was there in the middle of the freeway, other cars veering, swerving, honking to get around it, was the burning hulk of his beloved Camaro, the cop car in front of it also in flames, the officers in the one behind it yelling as they screeched to a halt and got out of theirs.

And no sign of Steve.

He couldn't get down there. He couldn't yell. He couldn't do _anything_. All he could do was watch helplessly as his car burned. And he couldn't see his partner.

Then he felt a searing pain through his skull and saw no more.

* * *

><p>Steve sensed it before he actually saw it.<p>

He hadn't actually been present the other two times Danny had awakened after seizing, but this time he was, with Kono, Chin, Malia and Charlie gathered 'round him in the hall just outside Danny's door. His head snapped up, eyes glaring through the small window in the door as something made the little hairs at the nape of his neck stand straight up.

"Boss?" Kono asked mid-sentence.

Without a word to any of them, Steve plowed through the door, sending it banging hard into the wall behind it, and was at Danny's bedside in less than a second, hands gripping the metal railing tightly. The others were right behind him.

Less than a minute later, Danny's eyes blinked open. They were unfocused, like he wasn't altogether there, not completely tracking.

"Danny?"

His partner's eyes widened, then he gripped Steve's forearm, using it to haul himself up to a sitting position. "Car!" he barked, still not quite aware of his surroundings. "Steve!"

"I'm here," Steve said, trying for soothing as he placed a hand on Danny's shoulder. "I'm right here. Danny, what car? What about the car?"

"He had another dream, didn't he," Chin said, staring wide-eyed at his friend.

Steve looked at Chin, then back at Danny. "Come on, Danny, tell me what happened. What car?"

"Mine. You're always…always driving my _car_…you…_why_? _Why_?"

"Malia, will you get his doctors?"

Malia nodded and scooted out of the room with Chin, hands holding tightly to each other as they went in search of Ma or Noshimuri.

"Danny, listen to me," Steve said calmly, leaning forward until Danny's eyes had no choice but to lock onto his own. "What did you see? Did you see me driving your car?"

"H1," Danny bit out, jaw working like he was trying to remember how to speak or something. Then his eyes filled with tears and they spilled out onto his cheeks unbidden. "Toward 63. No. Steve, _no_!"

Steve didn't know what the hell to do. Danny's fingers felt like they were about to go clean through his forearm, leaving him with nothing but a stump, and Danny himself looked like he was about to go off the deep end. So he did the only thing he could think of under the circumstances. He pulled back his left hand, balled it into a fist, and punched his best friend hard in the right bicep.

Danny blinked while Kono and Charlie stared like they couldn't believe what they'd just seen. "Steve?"

"Danny," Steve breathed in a sigh of relief. "Jesus Christ, man."

"Don't drive…don't drive my car. Don't let _anyone_ drive my car," Danny implored, hands finding Steve's and squeezing hard. "Please don't let anyone drive my car."

"Danny, why? What happens?"

"It…you blow up. You blow up in my car!"

Steve held his partner's eyes, then felt his own grow large and round. "Oh, no," he breathed, and he thought maybe he was squeezing Danny's hands back even harder.

"Boss?"

"Steve?" Danny shook Steve's hands, trying to get his attention.

Pulling his hands out of Danny's and whipping his cell phone out of his pocket, Steve hit a speed dial number, only to hear it ring from right there in Danny's room. "Shit!" he spat, racing over to the bathroom and finding the phone still ringing on the top of the toilet tank.

"What is it?" Charlie asked.

"Rachel's phone."

"Rachel's phone?" Danny repeated. "What's it doing here?"

"She must've left it when she took Grace home," Kono explained, then got a good look at her task force leader. "What's going on?"

Danny took in Steve's posture, his face…a face he'd seen before. "Oh, my God," Danny breathed, then ripped the IV out of his arm and started tearing the brain monitoring leads from his head and neck. "Oh, my _God_, no no no_ no_!"

"_What?_" Kono barked in frustration as the partners tore out of the room like their asses were on fire. She looked at Charlie in confusion, and then her face drained of all color. "Holy shit," she said. "Rachel and Grace took Danny's car!"


	14. Chapter 14

"No, _no_, don't have them tell her to stop!"

Steve eyed Danny across the cab of his pickup truck. Danny, who was wearing nothing but the hospital gown and the most fearful, agitated look on his face that Steve had ever seen.

"We don't know that getting her to stop isn't what makes it explode!" he cried, voice breaking. "_Fuck_, I could get there faster _flying_!"

"No, don't get her to stop, just keep going. We should be caught up to you soon, just get her to slow to about fifty miles per hour, get the freeway blocked off in a continuous five miles in front of and behind the Camaro, got it?" Steve barked into the phone. He listened a moment, then hung up and looked askance at Danny. "You can fly, too?"

"What?" Danny asked, genuinely confused.

"Just asking," Steve said, hand in the air to ward off a rant.

"Not my baby, not my baby," Danny whispered over and over again.

"Danny, look, you must have these dreams for a reason, right? A reason. You stopped what you saw happen last time. We'll stop it this time."

"How, Steve? We don't even know if this is the time the car explodes, what if it's not? What if it's some point in the future?" Danny's words were tumbling forth like a tidal wave covering Steve and the entirety of the truck's cab. "And even if this is the right time, if there…if there _is_ a bomb, how do we get them out of the car without stopping it, how—how…Steve…"

Steve had _never_ seen his partner fall apart like this. Even when Gracie'd been kidnapped he'd kept his shit together, albeit just barely, but this…this was a Danny Steve had never encountered.

"I'll get them out," he vowed and Danny looked at him like he had six heads.

"How? You can't pull a nine-year old girl through a window into your truck!"

"Maybe _I_ can't," Steve said as he raced in and out of traffic, lights flashing, sirens wailing. "But _you_ could."

"What? Me?"

"You're impervious to pain, Danny, _and_ you're stronger than me."

"How much it cost you to admit that out loud?"

"Shut up, I'm _serious_ here! I drive, you get in the bed of the truck. We get Grace out of that car."

"What about Rachel?" Danny asked, voice small as he seemed to be considering Steve's suggestion.

"We'll get her out, too."

"_How_?"

"I don't _know_! I'll think of something, okay? Dammit, Danny, we don't have a choice here, the only way we can be sure not to trigger that bomb is if the car keeps going on the freeway, you have any better ideas?"

Of course Danny didn't. But he never thought he'd see the day when he'd be counting on Steve's driving and some set of weird superpowers like he thought only existed in comic books to save his daughter's…and his ex-wife's…lives.

"Tell me you've got something in here for me to put on," Danny finally said. "I'm not rescuing my little girl with my ass hanging out for her and the entire freeway to see."

Steve barked out a laugh that did little to ease the tension, but a lot to raise his confidence in where Danny was mentally. If he could crack a joke about his bare ass, then he was all there with him, right where he needed to be.

And Steve knew exactly what he was going to do to save Rachel once Grace was in the truck. But he wasn't about to tell Danny that particular plan right now. Because there was no way Danny would let him go through with it.

Steve knew when the time came, neither of them would have a choice.

* * *

><p>Rachel was frantic, she knew something wasn't right when one of the police cars pulled up alongside her and told her to slow it down to fifty miles per hour. She wasn't used to the speed of the Camaro, and at first thought perhaps she'd simply been going too fast without realizing it, but the look on the officer's face told her much, much more was happening. She yelled out the window asking precisely what that was.<p>

"We don't know!" he called across. "But Detective Williams and Commander McGarrett are on their way!"

"I should pull over!"

"_No!_" the man bellowed from the passenger side of the squad car. "Whatever you do, do _not_ slow down any more than fifty!"

Her hands were once again ice cold as they gripped a steering wheel. The sun was right in her eyes and she reached up to lower the visor, only to catch sight of two things stuck to the back of it: a postcard of New Jersey, and a picture of Grace. Rachel's heart felt like a lump in her throat as her eyes returned to the freeway in front of her.

"Mommy?" Grace said from the backseat.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"What's going on?"

"I don't know, darling, but your father will be here soon with your Uncle Steve, and things will get properly sorted, don't you worry."

"He's okay now? Danno's okay?"

"I guess he must be if he's coming all the way out here from hospital to see you," she said, trying for cheerful as she eyed her daughter in the rearview mirror. "Don't you think?"

Grace nodded. She had dark circles under her eyes and her hair was a disaster and she looked completely drained. Rachel knew how her daughter felt, but could hardly spare a thought for consoling her at the moment given that she knew something probably very bad indeed was about to happen.

The problem was she didn't know _what_. And _that's_ what frightened her most of all.

* * *

><p>"Why the hell did she take my car?" Danny asked as he struggled to get a pair of Steve's shorts on in the backseat of the truck. "Why didn't you just have one of Duke's guys take her and Grace home when she told you her car wouldn't start?"<p>

"She just…she said her car wouldn't start, asked for the keys to yours," Steve said. "I didn't…I just gave them to her, I…" He looked up and met Danny's eyes in the rearview mirror, painfully reminded of when he'd escaped from Halawa and their positions were reversed. "Danny, I'm _sorry_. This is all my fault."

"What? How the hell is Aron Noshimuri _your_ fault?" Danny said as he grunted, hiked the shorts up and managed to get them buttoned around his waist, then zipped up. Shorts that on him, more resembled his daughter's culottes. He tore the hospital gown away and grabbed a Kukui High football tee shirt from Steve's bag of spare clothes, just getting it over his head when Steve responded.

"He's after _me_, Danny. He must've done his homework. When he failed to kill me outside your room, he planted a bomb on your car _knowing_ you'd be in the hospital for a while and that _I_ would probably drive your car."

"You," Danny said, shoving his arms into the sleeves of the faded blue tee, "_you_ need to stop being so fucking predictable."

"Danny…"

"No. You do _not_ get to take the weight of the world on your shoulders, not this time," Danny said, climbing back up to the passenger seat. "_I'm_ the strong one now, remember? We're gonna do this. You and me, we're gonna get them into this truck safe and sound, and no one's gonna get hurt, and we're gonna nail fucking Aron and Hiro and goddamn Wo Fat and whoever else there is to nail, okay?"

Steve took in his partner's bright, shining eyes, the fierce determination written all over his face, could practically _see_ the adrenaline coursing through Danny's veins and felt his own insides respond.

The yin to his yang.

The push to his pull.

Like he was the tide and Danny was the Moon, always somehow able to make him fly apart at the seams as much as he could stitch him back together again and so just like that, Steve felt his resolution click into place, self-flagellation for the situation locked away in the recesses of his compartmentalized mind.

"Yeah," he said, eyes back front and center on the road. "We're gonna do this."

He felt, more than saw, Danny's responding smile. "That's what I like to hear, partner."

They were gonna do this.

Holy Christ.


	15. Chapter 15

Rachel saw the dark blue Chevy pickup racing closer and closer in her side mirror. She kept one eye on it and one on the road until at last the truck pulled alongside them, keeping perfect pace with her cruise control-induced fifty miles per hour. "Steve!" she hollered when she saw only him in the cab. "What's happening?"

His response was to pull forward slightly, until Rachel realized the bed of the truck was even with her door, and Danny was standing at the edge of it, wind whipping his hair, now ungelled and starting to curl, every which-way. He was hanging on to the side of the bed with one hand, and in the other holding a phone.

"Danno!" Grace yelled from the backseat, eyes wide.

"Rachel, catch!" he yelled, then tossed the phone through the window.

It glanced off her fingertips and onto the passenger-side floor. She reached as far as she could, but couldn't get to it. "Grace, honey, unbuckle, come up to the front and get the phone off the floor for me."

"But you said I'm not supposed to—"

"Grace!" Rachel barked, hating herself for sounding so nasty. "Do as I say!" Grace unbuckled herself and climbed up between the bucket seats, got herself sat down in the passenger seat and leaned forward, grabbing the phone off the floor. It was ringing. "Put it on speaker for me," Rachel said, and Grace did.

"_Rachel?"_

"Steve, what the _hell's_ going on?" she asked, fear making her voice high and tight.

"_Listen to me, Rachel, I'm going to get on the other side of you. I need Grace to crawl out of her window, Danny's going to get her into the truck. Do you understand?"_

"What? _No_! Grace is most _certainly_ not climbing out of this car while it's moving, have you lost your _mind_?"

"_Rachel, we don't have a choice. There's a _bomb_ on that car, Danny saw it in a dream, we have to get both of you out of there, but we can't let you stop the car in case that's what triggers it!"_

"A…_bomb_?" Rachel repeated, and Grace looked as pale as a ghost.

"Mommy?" she said in a small, frightened voice.

"How…how can he possibly get her over to the truck safely?" Rachel asked, hoarse from all the crying and yelling.

"_Danny's stronger, Rachel. He can do this, I promise you he can _do_ this."_

She watched as Steve slowed enough to get behind the Camaro, then come up on the passenger side. "What if he has a seizure while she's halfway in between?"

"_Rachel, he has these dreams for a reason. He stopped Grace from being there when Aron tried to kill me and he saved my life. He dreamed this so he could save yours and Grace's. Please…just…Gracie? Gracie, can you hear me?"_

"Uncle Steve, I'm scared. I can't go out the window!"

"_Baby, listen to me. Can you see Danno right now?"_

Rachel felt a tear slide down her cheek over Steve's use of 'baby,' a term she'd only ever heard Danny call their little girl. Steve must've hung out with Grace when she was with Danny a lot more than Rachel even knew to have picked it up.

"Yeah, he's smiling and waving his hands for me to come over, but…Uncle Steve, I _can't_!"

"_You're a Williams, right?"_ Steve asked, voice strong and steady. Rachel eyed him through Grace's open window. Grace nodded. _"I happen to know for a _fact_ that Williamses are the strongest, bravest people in the whole wide world. Your Danno sure is, and you're his daughter, so you have to be, too."_

Rachel wasn't sure how much of that was for Grace's benefit and how much was actually what Steve felt. All she could do was open her arm to her daughter when Grace launched herself at her. "Uncle Steve's right, Grace," she said, her voice quivering in pure, unadulterated fear. "You must go to your father _now_."

"I'm not leaving you here!"

"_Gracie, I'm going to get your mom out once you're safe in here with Danno."_

"You are?" Grace asked, looking out the window at her adopted uncle.

He looked her right in the eye and nodded.

"Promise, Uncle Steve? You won't let my mom die?"

"_I promise, Grace. But in order for me to do that, you have to get to your dad in the back of the truck. He needs you to just sit on the edge of the window, and then I'm going to come real close and he's going to grab you, and you need to hold on to him. Can you do that for him?"_

Grace looked into her mother's eyes, then hugged her fiercely. Rachel kissed her cheek, tears streaming down both their faces. "I love you, Grace Ann Williams. I love you so much."

"I love you too, Mommy," Grace said.

"_Grace, honey, can you go now? Go to your Danno now!"_

Rachel watched in fascination as the part of Grace that was pure Danny squared her shoulders, set her jaw defiantly and forced a veil of _I can damn well do this_ over her eyes. She didn't think she'd ever been more proud of their daughter than she was in that moment.

"Go on, you can do it. Your father won't let you fall."

Grace nodded, crawled back over to the passenger seat, and looked her father in the eyes as Steve pulled ahead just enough that Danny was even with her, halfway along the bed of the pickup. As she pulled herself up, gripping the seatbelt to keep herself from just flying out the window, the wind caused by the car's speed whipped her pigtails around, thwacking her in the face and the back of the head.

"Steady, darling, steady…" Rachel murmured as she held tightly to one of Grace's ankles.

Steve brought the pickup closer…closer…so close now that if either he or Rachel jerked so much as a fraction of an inch the vehicles would sideswipe each other.

"Grace!" Danny called, arms outstretched. He had a foot hooked under the silver storage chest butted up against the back of the cab, and he was stretching his body out as far as he could. "You need to reach out with one hand, hold on to the roof of the car with the other, can you do that?" Danny hollered.

She nodded her head, reaching out and back with her left hand while her right clung fiercely to the top window edge of the car where it joined with the roof. Tears streamed out of her eyes, partially because she was scared shitless, partially from the sting of the wind.

Danny grabbed for her but missed and cursed a litany when Rachel swerved away just enough to put him a good foot out of reach.

"_Keep it steady!"_ Steve barked through the phone. Rachel planted her hand atop the steering wheel, still holding tightly to her daughter's ankle, and kept her eyes on the road in front of her, gauging the distance from the white dotted lines separating the lanes and doing everything she could to keep the Camaro in the exact same spot at all times. She wanted more than anything to watch Danny save Grace, but she knew her driving right now was the thing that could kill her daughter if she wasn't completely focused.

She would do anything…_any_thing…to save her little girl.

"Come on, Grace!" Danny called out as Steve brought the two vehicles closer…closer…then suddenly Grace's ankle was being wrenched out of Rachel's hand.

Rachel gasped, jerking the wheel, and sparks flew as the right fender of the Camaro hit the side of the pickup. She veered back to the left in time to see Grace's feet fly up into the air and hear Danny yell, "I got you, Monkey!"

She breathed a huge sigh of relief and swiped at the tears on her face. Grace was safe. Grace was _safe_.

But how the hell were they going to get _her_ out of the car? Her mind raced, but she simply couldn't see any way for it to be done.

"_Rachel?"_

"You can't get me out, can you? I'm going to have to take a chance and stop the car. Aren't I."

He didn't respond.

"Steve?"

"_No. I just…I have to talk to Danny real quick, and then I'm getting you out of there."_

"How?" she asked incredulously.

"_I'm going to come over there and get you out myself."_

Rachel's eyes widened. With Danny and Grace in the truck bed, if Steve came over to the Camaro, then who the hell was going to be driving the truck?

"Steve, I don't want you taking any risks for me."

"_Rachel, not saving you is _not_ an option. I promised Danny."_ He was silent for a moment. _"I promised _Grace_."_

Suddenly it hit her: Steve would do whatever it took to keep that promise. Her gut twisted itself into knots as she realized that meant Steve would even give his _life_ to do so.


	16. Chapter 16

Danny got Grace to crawl through the back window of Steve's cab, and then slid himself through it with a, "One word about my size from you and it'll be the last word out of your mouth," to his partner, who was watching in the rearview mirror.

"_Danny?"_

"Rachel!"

"Mommy!"

"_Grace, are you all right?"_

"Yeah, Danno pulled me, I was _flying_, it was cool! What about you?"

"_I'm all right, sweetheart. Just do as your father says."_

Grace looked to her dad, who got her settled in the backseat on the passenger side. "Buckle up, Monkey," he said, kissing her forehead and smoothing her hair back.

"Uncle Steve, what are you going to do to save Mommy? You promised me you would."

"That's right, I did," Steve said as Danny climbed into the front passenger seat.

"I'm not going to like this, am I?" Danny asked, turning so he was facing his partner.

"No. And I don't have time to argue about it. We don't have much freeway left, then she's going to _have_ to slow down simply because of road quality."

"Shit," Danny breathed, running a hand over his face. "Let me go to the Camaro and get Rachel back over here."

Steve eyed him. "That's what I'm going to do."

"What? No! Steve, I'm the one with the super strength, no pain, the whole nine. _I'll_ go."

But Steve was already unbuckling his seatbelt. "I told you I don't have time to argue. Now, I'm climbing out of this window. You have five seconds to take the wheel and keep this truck from crashing with you and Grace in it."

"_Steve!_"

"Danny, I mean it. Take the goddamn wheel."

Danny's eyes locked with Steve's and it took all of one second for Danny's face to scrunch up like he knew there was no way he was talking his partner out of this and of course no way in hell he was going to let the truck crash with Gracie inside.

"I hate you. I hate you _so_ much," Danny seethed as he scooted across the center console and grabbed the wheel, practically sitting on Steve's lap until Steve gathered his legs beneath him and hiked himself up into a sitting position in the open window's space.

"No you don't, Danno," Steve said with a wry grin. "You love me." He grinned even wider when Danny narrowed his eyes at him. "Now as soon as I get in that car, I'm switching places with Rachel, and you're going to have to pull her in through this window."

Danny swallowed hard, eyes on the road, unable to get completely into the seat with Steve's size eleven clodhoppers still there. "I can do that." He glanced up to find Steve was twisted around so he could gauge the speed and distance between the two vehicles. "Slow it up a bit, get me directly even with the passenger window."

He eased up on the accelerator, grinding his teeth over the fact that he had to sit way forward on the seat in order to reach the goddamn pedals. He quickly reached down and found the button that moved the seat forward. Steve leaned down and smirked at him. "Shut up," Danny said. "Why does it have to be you, huh?"

Steve half-shrugged. "Because I made a promise." He craned his neck down a little further to look at a wide-eyed Grace. "I'll have your mom over here before you know it."

"Uncle Steve?"

"Yeah."

"You come back, too."

"I'll do my best," he replied.

"Rachel, I'm coming over," Steve said into the phone. He then handed it to Danny, who squeezed Steve's fingers just a little in the process.

Because right at that moment, Danny couldn't think of a damn thing to say. Here was his partner getting ready to risk his neck to save Danny's ex-wife…Grace's mother…and he just didn't know what to do with that at _all_.

So when Steve got his feet up and out until he was standing on the running board just the other side of the door, when he made eye contact with him for half a second, and when Steve said, "Dinner's on you tonight, Super Danno," all Danny could do was bark out a laugh and watch Steve turn and launch himself at the Camaro.

His heart caught in his throat during that handful of nanoseconds where Steve was suspended in mid-jump, then all the air whooshed out of his lungs when Steve's legs went straight into the passenger window of the Camaro, hands catching where the roof of the car met the door, and he slid inside in one smooth move.

"Smooth Dog, huh?" Danny mumbled, thinking maybe _that's _what the moniker had meant all along.

"_Danny, can you hear me?"_

"Yeah."

"_All right, I'm going to switch places with Rachel, then I'm going to keep us just a couple inches apart. Rachel, you've got to do what Grace did, sit on the edge, turn around and reach out for Danny."_

"_But he won't be able to pull me through at these speeds, not with one hand!"_

"_He will, Rachel, he's really strong. Trust me. He will."_

Danny felt sweat pouring down his neck, soaking Steve's football tee shirt. Felt it matting his hair to his head, trickling down from his sideburns, palms clamming up. Rachel's life was in the hands of him and his partner, and no one else. If they screwed this up, especially with Grace sitting _right there_, none of them would ever recover. Danny knew this to the tips of his toes.

He glanced to the left and saw that Steve and Rachel had already switched places. _Goddamn Speedy Gonzalez_. Now Rachel was scooting up to sit in the window. She turned and looked at Danny, who leaned as far out as he could while keeping the truck going straight and true. He reached for her and caught her hand.

"Danny, I can't!" she cried, looking down at the pavement racing by in the sliver of space between the Camaro and the pickup.

"Rachel, do _not_ say that in front of our daughter. You _can_ and you _will_. Don't look down! Look at _me_!" Danny steeled himself, felt power welling up inside him like he'd never known before. "You have a _baby_ at home who needs you." He hesitated, then hollered, "_Stan_ needs you."

She swallowed convulsively, hand holding tightly to his. Then she nodded like she'd just decided that yes, she _would_ do this and she'd survive it, dammit. She turned further until she was holding Danny's left wrist with one hand and his hand with her other. Danny could see that Steve was holding tight to one of Rachel's shins.

"All right!" Danny called out. "On three, Rachel, you ready?"

On three. Things, _important_ things, always happened on the count of three, Danny couldn't help but think, an image of two strangers holding each other at gunpoint in a garage flashing through his head.

Rachel nodded, her hair obscuring her eyes, but there wasn't time for her to swipe it away because barely a mile ahead this freeway was ending. "One," Danny called out. "Two!" He squeezed her hand as tightly as he could and yelled, "_Three_!"

Steve yelled.

Rachel screamed.

The truck veered off to the right.


	17. Chapter 17

_What the fuck am I thinking?_ Danny asked himself about ten times in the moments where his left hand was the only thing holding Rachel to the side of Steve's truck. He braked slowly until at last the truck stopped completely, half his attention on the Camaro and two accompanying black-and-whites speeding away to where the H1 turned into Farrington Highway.

If HPD had done what Steve asked, the way would be clear for the Camaro. But what the hell was Steve going to do with it? How was he going to get out of the car without stopping it? Open the door and take a leap, losing half his skin in the process? _Well, it's not like he's never done _that_ before_, Danny thought as he opened the door and enveloped Rachel – and then Grace, when she got out of the backseat – in his arms. He looked up to see Chin, Kono, Malia and Charlie headed their way with four uniformed officers.

"Rachel, Grace, listen to me," Danny said, pulling away from them. "You need to go with Chin and Kono, okay?"

"Where are you going?" Rachel asked as Danny hiked himself back into the truck.

"I have to go after Steve," he replied, pulling the door closed.

"Danno!"

"It's okay, Monkey. I'm going to bring Uncle Steve back, okay?"

"Danny, what are you going to do?" Kono asked as Chin gently herded Rachel and Grace back toward his waiting car.

His face was grim as he looked at her. "I don't know. But I have to do _something_."

She ran around to the passenger side of the truck, opened the door and leaped in. "Not without me, you're not."

Then the back door behind Danny opened. "Make that not without _us_," Chin corrected.

Danny nodded once, put the truck in gear and sped away. He kept his attention on the rearview mirror for a moment, where he could see Grace and Rachel being safely tucked into the backseat of Chin's car, and two of HPD's finest getting into the front.

"Steve," Danny said toward the phone, still in its holder on the dashboard, line still open. "You hear me? You okay?"

"_How are Rachel and Grace?"_

"They're fine, HPD's taking care of them," Danny replied. "I asked about _you_."

"_Oh, you know me."_

"That's why I'm worried."

"_Aw, Danno."_

"Shut up, the kids are listening."

Chin shook his head while Kono grinned.

"_What are you doing?"_

"How the hell should I know? This is _your_ brilliant plan. What are you going to do with the car?"

"_Ditch it."_

"Where?"

"_There's a landfill up ahead about five miles, I figured that would be the safest spot in case it detonates."_

"And you're getting out how, Steven?"

"_It's an evolving plan."_

"Evolv—you moron!"

"_Hey, I thought you were worried about me."_

"Shut up. Just…are you going to bail, or what?"

"_All I can do, probably. I'll let you know when I'm about to, but stay _back_, Danny."_

"Bastard," Danny groused, finally relaxing just a fraction as the Camaro's taillights came into view.

"_Get HPD to back off, too. We don't need collateral damage."_

Danny turned to look at Kono, who pulled her phone out and made the call.

"Jesus Christ."

"That was some pretty fancy rescuing you two pulled off back there," Chin said, hand resting on Danny's shoulder.

"Don't remind me or I might go into a catatonic state just thinking about how that could've all gone _so_ wrong."

"_Hey, Rachel and Grace are safe, we did it, so what's the problem?"_

"The problem? I'll tell you what the problem is," Danny replied to the disembodied voice of his partner, one hand waving around in front of him. "The problem is that thanks to spending so much time around _you_, _Lieutenant Commander_, I am now just as certifiable as _you_ are!"

"_Says the man who can lift me over his head like a ballerina."_

"Wait, who's the ballerina?" Kono asked as she hung up with HPD.

Steve laughed out loud. Danny scowled, but couldn't keep the corners of his mouth from turning up.

"_It'll be fine, Danny. Me jumping ship is a lot easier than what we did with Grace and Rachel. Piece of cake."_

"But look what happened the last time you tried to _make_ cake!" Danny practically yelled, both hands gesturing as Kono reached over and grabbed the wheel. Danny smiled sheepishly and took it back.

"Boss tried to bake?" Kono asked, eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, a cake for Gracie's birthday. Miserable, miserable failure. The man's too used to MREs."

"_Hey, it's not my fault I never had KP duty in the service. Okay, guys, I just made the right into the front entrance of the landfill."_

"HPD said they'd warn them you were coming," Kono reported.

"_Thanks, Kono. Chin?"_

"I'm here, Steve."

"_I want you to...oh, shit."_

Danny's blood went cold in his veins. "What's oh, shit…Steve? Steven? _Steve!_"

"_They've got graders out here smoothing over the entire landfill!"_ Steve replied. _"I don't have a safe zone!"_

"Oh, my _God_," Kono breathed as they made the turn into the landfill. "What are you going to do?"

"_Only thing I can,"_ Steve said, voice steely. _"Go over the ridge at the top of the landfill."_

"The…" Danny looked up ahead of them, taking note of the upward slope that ended at what looked like a minor mountain ridge. "What's on the other side of that?" he asked.

"A really steep drop-off," Chin replied.

"How steep is steep?"

"Even if there isn't a bomb on the car, steep enough to make her explode when she hits bottom," was Chin's response.

"Steve, so help me God, you'd better be rolling out of that car in the next five seconds."

"_Can't, Danno. This road wasn't meant for a muscle car, it's too rutted. It could veer off at any point and kill someone."_

"Yes, like _you_!" Danny's voice had reached the high registers. "So what, you're just going to take a flying leap off the edge of the cliff? Are you fucking _insane_? Get out of the goddamn car _now_!"

Danny felt his entire being go hot, felt like his face must be cherry-red, felt everything from scalp to toes tingle, felt like his insides were filled with butterflies.

Steve didn't respond.

"You are _not_ praying right now, because you are _not_ going over the edge of that goddamn cliff!" Danny shouted.

Nothing.

"God_dam_mit!" Danny bellowed, slamming on the brakes, raising a cloud dust so thick around them he could no longer see the Camaro.

"Danny, what are you _doing_?" Kono asked when Danny practically threw himself out of the truck, door flying open and back so hard it re-closed.

"Danny!" Chin called, but Danny was racing barefoot along the rutted dirt road.

"_Steve!_" Danny cried out. He put his head down and felt strength surge through his body, not knowing where it was coming from, not caring, but he _knew_ he was running faster…faster…faster.

_No no no no no_, was the only thing his mind kept thinking over and over again as the Camaro came closer and closer to the ridge. As it came closer and closer, and Steve stayed inside.

He felt like the entire world had gone into slow motion then. Like he was watching some fucked-up movie and the jerks playing it had purposely done this just to draw out the most god-awful moment he thought he'd ever witnessed.

The moment where the Camaro reached the top of the ridge.

Where the driver's side door came open.

Where Danny got close enough that he could almost reach out and touch the trunk of the car.

His partner stayed inside and the car flew over the edge.

"_No!_" Danny cried, still running, just as Steve's body and the vehicle separated in mid-air. "_Steve!_"


	18. Chapter 18

Steve blinked.

Then he blinked again.

By rights, at this very moment he should either be dead or in a world of hurt.

Instead he was…uh…well, he was…

"Danny?"

His partner's eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

"Um…Danny?"

One blue eye appeared as Danny cracked it open.

"Steve?"

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Could you, uh…maybe…put me down? Chin and Kono are looking."

Danny finally opened _both_ eyes and looked upward to find, as Steve had said, both Chin and Kono looking over the edge of the cliff. Both of their mouths were wide open. The Camaro exploded in a brilliant flash of light, and without warning Danny and Steve were moving backwards away from the heat of the mushroom-shaped blast.

Moving.

Sort of. More like…well…

"Danny?"

"I can't put you down," his partner said.

"Why not?"

"Because we're, uh…" Danny looked pointedly down.

Steve, cradled in his partner's arms like a baby or the girl he very much was _not_, half sat up so he could look down, too.

He promptly turned, wrapped his arms around Danny's neck, face gone completely pale, jaw dropped, cheek against Danny's cheek. "Eep!" was the very unmanly sound he made.

"Yeah."

For there they were, short partner carrying tall partner in his arms. Only Danny wasn't actually standing on anything. He was floating. In the air. With Steve held tightly to his chest.

"You know I was kidding before when I asked if you could fly, right?"

Danny cleared his throat. "Think maybe we ought to head back up."

"No, no, no, down. Go down, Danno."

"But I can get us _up_ just as easily as _down_. I…think."

"You think."

Danny shrugged. "I guess."

As if to prove his point, up and up and up they went, up and over the edge of the ridge, sailing gently in an arc above the heads of their stunned teammates, Danny's feet planting on dry, dusty ground just as half a dozen HPD squad cars came screaming up, stopping in a cloud of dust that made them all sneeze.

"Uh, Danny, you can put me down now."

"What? Oh. Right."

And Danny did.

The four of them just stared at each other.

Finally, Danny tweaked the end of his nose with his thumb, opened his mouth and held his hand in the air, one finger raised, poised to say something that would, no doubt, be profound.

But then his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed into the dirt.

Steve was on his knees at Danny's side in the blink of an eye. He wasn't having a seizure. His pulse was strong and steady. His pupils weren't fixed or dilated. Steve looked up at the two closest approaching officers. "Get an ambulance up here!" he hollered.

Then he turned to look at Chin and Kono.

"Did he just…" Chin's voice trailed off.

"Seriously?" Kono said.

"Holy shit," Steve breathed. "He really _has_ turned into Super Danno."

"I don't believe this. _Malia_ is never going to believe this," Chin said, running a hand through his dusty black hair.

"Oh, my God, he needs to take _me_ flying," Kono said, looking down at Danny in wonder.

Steve looked at her for a second, then back down at Danny, whose hair he smoothed back from his face. "Jesus Christ, Danno," he breathed. "What the _hell_ is going on?"

* * *

><p>What the hell was going on, indeed.<p>

Rachel and Grace had been taken safely home, with plenty of HPD officers on-hand to safeguard them.

Doctors Ma and Noshimuri were taking scans of Danny's brain, leaving Steve and their teammates waiting in his hospital room. Pacing, was more like it, none of them were still. Charlie stood by while Malia went in search of the doctors to see what she could find out about Danny's condition.

"He flew."

Steve looked up at Kono.

"He freaking _flew_."

Steve scrubbed a hand down his face. "Yeah."

"How is this even possible? Malia says it's _not_!" Chin interjected.

"I don't know any more than you do!" Steve said. "You think I wasn't shocked as shit when I opened my eyes to find that instead of being dead, I was being carried in the air like Lois Lane?"

"Don't say that around Danny, he'll never let you live it down," Chin warned.

Steve grimaced.

"Speaking of," Kono said, and all three backed out of the way as two orderlies wheeled Danny's bed into the room…sans Danny.

"Where's—?" Steve started to ask.

"…telling you I can walk fine on my _own_!"

"Never mind," Steve breathed, grinning ear-to-ear when Danny, still in Steve's shorts and tee shirt and still dusty as hell, stalked in behind the orderlies and the bed, with Ma, Noshimuri and Malia on his tail, all protesting his refusal to cooperate.

"What's going on here?" Steve asked, putting on a scowl and folding his arms over his chest. He even planted his feet at parade rest, causing Danny to roll his eyes.

"These people in_sist_," Danny said, jerking his thumb back at the three doctors, "that I have a head injury, and swear to _God_ if you say one _word_, Steven, I will give _you_ the head injury."

"But Danny—"

"No. I am fine. I do _not_ know why I am wearing your gargantuan clothes, but I. Am. Fine. Why is Malia here? Chin, Kono, what—?"

"Danny, you—"

"Never mind, I just want to go home. I feel like I've been carrying ten men today and do _not_ give me some snappy comeback to that, Steve, because—"

"Jesus Christ, Danny, shut _up_!"

Everyone who had been talking – Danny included – did.

Danny blinked at him.

Steve approached his partner, but kept a good foot of space between them. He made eye contact. "Danny, you _do_ have a head injury."

"Actually," Dr. Ma spoke up quietly, arm raised in the air, "it would appear he no longer does."

Everyone except Danny, who was less-than-amused, looked at Ma in shock. "What are you saying? What about the uncinate thing?"

"Uncinate thing?" Danny repeated, looking at Steve like he was growing a second head out of his shoulder.

"I can't explain it," Noshimuri said. "Detective Williams' brain scans, including the X-ray and the MRI, are all coming back normal."

Danny cut his eye at Steve. "No comments from the peanut gallery," he warned.

Steve glared at him for a second, then turned his attention back to Alan. "What about the injured area having grown? What about the premonitions he was having, the increased strength, being impervious to pain!"

"Impervious to _pain_?" Danny practically shrieked. "McGarrett, what the hell kind of drugs are you on? I can assure you I'm not impervious to any pain other than the one you cause me on a daily basis. Even then, it gives me a headache. Which I have now, I might add. So, Doctor, if you'd just give me a Tylenol or three, I'll be on my way."

No one knew what to do or say. But without anything physically wrong with him, nobody could force Danny to stay in the hospital.

* * *

><p>"Give me my keys," Danny said as they finally left his hospital room one hour later.<p>

"I, uh…I don't have them."

"Well, where are they?"

"In the car."

"You left my keys in the car? What the hell's the matter with you?" When Steve didn't answer, just chewed on his lip, Danny stopped at the end of the hall where double sliding glass doors were all that stood between him and Hawaii's bright, burning sun. "Where is my car?"

Kono and Chin stayed back by the room and watched. "Oh, God, he's going to blow," Kono said.

"Right about…" Chin waited, then nodded. "Now."

"You did _what?_"

Steve exited.

Danny followed, hands a-waving and voice a-shouting.

It would've been funny had it not been for the fact that very obviously, Danny didn't remember _anything_ from the last twenty-four hours. Neither cousin envied Steve having to try and get it through his thick head what'd been happening.

Malia got last-minute instructions from Noshimuri.

Duke got last-minute instructions from Chin.

The cousins decided the partners would probably go back to Steve's to get washed up and dress Danny in his _own_ clothes, so they figured the same would go for them and they all went their respective ways.

They'd meet up at Five-0 headquarters later.

Hopefully, Steve would already have Danny believing what had been happening, and maybe even jogging his memory. Because if there was one thing they didn't want to face from their Jersey teammate, it was him thinking _they _were the ones who'd gone nuts.

Which, Kono considered, might actually be more believable than thinking she saw Danny fly.


	19. Chapter 19

Danny just stood there, staring at the short movie that replayed itself over and over and over again from Five-0's secure cloud. Chin had uploaded the video and sent Danny the link, and he was…mesmerized.

Dumbfounded.

Speechless.

Steve came down the steps and the first thing he noticed was Danny was wearing nothing but his blue-gray dress pants. No shoes and socks. No tee shirt or shirt. His hair was still pretty damp from having showered first, and while it'd been combed straight back in its usual style, the bits that were drying made it pretty clear Danny hadn't even applied product to it yet, which in and of itself was noteworthy.

"Hey," Steve said from the bottom step, but Danny didn't move.

"_How is that _possible_?"_ Steve heard Kono's voice say from the cell phone held tightly in Danny's hands.

"_Uh, Danny, you can put me down now."_

"_What? Oh. Right."_

Steve swallowed hard. Chin. Chin must've recorded Danny flying at the landfill. He took a few tentative steps toward his partner, who was standing between the couch and the coffee table near the television in the living room.

The video ended and Danny tapped the touch-screen to make it stop when it started up all over again. He stared at the frozen image of himself hovering in mid-air halfway down a steep cliff with Steve held in his arms and them looking at each other with nearly visible question marks over their heads.

"I can…_fly_?" Danny whispered, voice turning into more of a squeak at the end. He looked up, eyes imploring Steve to give answers that…well, that Steve couldn't give.

"You could then." Steve swallowed again, Adam's apple bobbing up and down. "You've saved my life twice in the last twenty-four hours, D."

"What was the first time?" Danny asked, leaning down and placing the phone on the coffee table.

"You really don't remember _any_ of it, do you?"

Danny's eyes were clouded, face troubled as he shook his head.

"Here, come on, let's sit down," Steve suggested, gesturing toward the couch. Like a zombie, Danny moved and did as instructed, holding himself stiffly upright when he sat rather than sinking back into the cushions like he usually did.

How to explain this all to Danny? That he'd fallen down the steps, that pineapple had been involved somehow in the unfortunate incident - something which under normal circumstances would've had Steve belly laughing 'til the end of Time. But these circumstances were anything but normal. The doctor treating Danny was not only the son of Hiro Noshimuri, but had an identical twin who would've killed Steve had it not been for Danny's premonition and super speed in spite of having a Traumatic Brain Injury.

How was he to tell his partner that this fucked up bullshit that was Steve's life had nearly gotten Rachel and Grace killed today? How to tell him he was holding Steve over his head in the hospital like he weighed no more than a matchstick, and that he'd flown…_flown in the air_…saving Steve from breaking every bone in his body as he drove the Camaro over the ridge at the landfill?

How to explain to a man who didn't even believe in the _heiau_, who barely respected native Hawaiian beliefs at _all_ (although he was getting better thanks to Gabby), who to this day had never so much as hinted that he believed in _anything_ supernatural that he'd become…that he'd become _what_, though? Some kind of short Jersey superhero? A comic book character? A psychic?

But he tried. Steve told Danny everything, explained all he'd seen and heard, all he'd experienced in Danny's presence since finding him sprawled on the landing of the staircase at his new apartment building. It seemed like _weeks_ had passed, but it was only just going on twenty-six hours since that near heart attack-inducing moment where Steve's joviality had been shattered in the blink of an eye.

After he got it all out, some half an hour later, the two men sat quietly side by side on the couch, their legs wide open as men do, Steve's left knee barely brushing Danny's right. They just sat lost in their own thoughts trying to make sense of something that didn't happen in real life. Something that made no logical sense, that the doctors – Malia included – insisted was impossible and yet also insisted could just as well _be_ possible given how little was known about the majority of the human brain.

"You know," Danny finally said, then cleared his throat and ran a hand through his now-dry and very wavy, fluffy hair. "Remember when you guys all helped me move into that new apartment, the one where our vic was killed?"

Steve nodded, not trusting his voice.

"I never told you why I suddenly decided not to live there."

That got Steve's attention. He turned his body toward his partner, his subconscious signal that he was all ears. A signal Danny's own subconscious always picked up on like they were specifically tuned to read everything about each other.

"No, you never did. You seemed pretty freaked out, though."

"I was," Danny replied, then looked directly into Steve's eyes. "When I was coming in, I saw and talked to an older lady. She was doing something with flowers, had a big hat on, had a little dog with her."

Steve waited. He could sense Danny needed to do this in his own time. It took a handful of minutes infused with a lot of fidgeting and eyes darting everywhere like he was afraid he'd be overheard, but finally he continued.

"When I mentioned the woman to my new landlady, when I described her, she…" Danny's voice trailed off.

"Hey," Steve said, elbow nudging Danny's bicep. "I'm not going to laugh at you, D. Not after what I've seen you do today."

Danny gave him a small smile of thanks, then finally blurted it out. "She told me that woman was dead."

"Wait…the woman you talked to? The one with the dog?"

"Was dead," Danny nodded.

"That's what freaked you out," Steve said, ducking his head to catch Danny's eye. "You realized you'd seen a ghost."

"Yeah," Danny confirmed. "I couldn't…I don't believe in that stuff, Steve. I don't believe in supernatural crap. Never have."

"Just like the _heiau_," Steve said, and his partner nodded. "You don't believe that our ancestors are spirits meant to be protected, the places where their bodies are buried meant to be respected. That they can cause bad things to happen if we don't. That they can help us if we do."

"No," Danny said, shaking his head, voice barely audible. "Not the _'Aumakua_. Not the _heiau_. Not the fact that I supposedly talked to and saw a ghost like she was as real and solid as you are." Danny swallowed so hard Steve heard the gulp. "And now…now you're telling me I had a brain injury, did all these…these damn…cartoon superhero things and…then just like that I'm all healed up, not a sign that anything was wrong, except for what you guys remember me doing."

"And the video proof that you _did_ it. At least, proof of the flying."

Danny got to his feet and paced back and forth from the living room to the office and back again several times. It was making Steve antsy so he, too, stood. Just as Danny was pacing back toward him for the fifth time in a row, he stopped, head snapping up to look directly at Steve.

"Danny?"

Danny's jaw dropped, eyes growing large and round.

"Are you okay?"

Steve started to move toward his partner when, without warning, Danny shot forward and in a blur of movement and a painful blow, tackled Steve to the floor simultaneous with the sound of breaking glass.

A sniper shot, right through the front living room window.

Danny was heavy on Steve's body, arms wrapped around him tightly.

"Danny!" Steve yelled, grasping Danny's biceps to push him off.

Another sound, the tinkle of breaking glass, and tiny shards rained down onto Steve's head. He quickly squeezed his eyes closed. "Danny!" he barked, rolling the other man off him so that Danny was lying on the floor.

Steve scrambled to the table next to the front door and grabbed his weapon. He had it out of its holster and safety-off in a second, then crawled back to Danny's side.

Danny was still lying on the floor.

He wasn't moving.

That's when Steve saw the blood.


	20. Chapter 20

"Danny!" Steve yelled, keeping his head down as yet another tinkle of glass was heard. He checked around Danny's head and neck one-handed, but couldn't find a wound anywhere. He realized why as a single drop of blood fell down onto the tip of Danny's nose. Fell from _Steve's_ head.

He lifted his hand and hissed as his fingertips touched a graze along his left temple. He _had_ to be missing some of those silver hairs, but the fact that he wasn't face-down with a bullet in his brain made him welcome the sharp sting and not worry about the streaks.

Danny had saved his life. _Again_.

Steve checked his partner's pulse and found it strong and steady. Checked his eyes, pupils responding normally. He sounded like his breathing was normal, too, so Steve scurried over to the living room window. In the distance near the head of his driveway he could see an Asian-looking man fully camouflaged holding a sniper rifle and taking aim.

He ducked down just as Danny gasped loudly and sat bolt upright. "_Danny!_" Steve yelled, launching himself across the room toward his partner as yet _more_ breaking glass was heard. He landed on Danny hard, both men _oomphing_ loudly.

"Steven," Danny said a couple seconds later, "I'm down with the whole male bonding thing, but really?"

Steve reared back off him, then hunkered down low to the floor. "Asshole, I just kept you from getting shot."

"Yeah. After _I_ kept _you_ from getting shot."

"You remember?" Steve asked, eyes wide.

Danny nodded. "I saw it happening, I saw you go down."

"Well, thank you. Now I owe you one _again_."

"That only works if you actually remember your wallet."

"That happened one _time_!"

Danny held up two fingers indicating his more accurate count of said number of times even as he crawled across the living room to a small desk and opened the bottom cupboard on the right-hand side.

"How'd you know I keep a stash of weapons in there?"

"You're Steve. You stash weapons _everywhere_. It was a fair bet there'd be _something_." Danny fished in the cupboard, pulled something out and turned to give Steve a funny look. "Do I really want to know how or why you have a submachine gun?"

"No," Steve shook his head as he executed a roll maneuver to get back up under the living room window. He watched as the sniper used a scope to get a closer look at the house. "Stay down, Danny," Steve whispered.

"Hey, I'm not messin' with my 'do, it doesn't need to be parted by bullets," Danny whispered back as he joined Steve at the window.

"Have you _looked_ at your 'do?"

"Your eyes are not mirrors, what am I going to look at myself with?"

"No gel."

"I didn't put _gel_ in my hair?"

"Nope. You've got the fluff look going on."

"You liken me to Mr. Hoppy and I'll kick your ass."

Steve snorted as he watched the sniper stash the scope in a small pack he wore around his waist.

"You recognize him?" Danny asked.

Steve shook his head. "He's too far away for facial recognition, and he's wearing camo paint."

"Oh, so in other words, a man after your own heart."

Steve kept his eyes trained on the sniper as he deadpanned, "Naw, D, that's just you."

Danny rolled his eyes. "So what's the plan?"

"I'm going to go out the back, circle around and come at him from the road. You keep eyes on him and tell me if he so much as twitches."

"That's your plan. Not call for backup and actually _wait_ for it to arrive?"

"Right."

"Good to know _some_ things haven't changed."

Steve gave him a lopsided smile. "Here's your cell phone, I took it out of your pocket when I found you on the steps at your place."

"Thanks," Danny said, taking the phone. "I'm calling for backup anyway. Because, you know, if they didn't arrive ten minutes after everything was over, it wouldn't be Five-0."

Steve held the back of his hand up to his nose and mouth to stifle a snort, then gave Danny a very serious look. "You got this?"

"Yeah. I got this."

"No more seizures."

"I can't promise that."

"Well, just…" Steve laid a hand on his partner's shoulder and squeezed. "Just don't, okay?"

Danny didn't answer, but he didn't have to, because it wasn't really a question. He turned and watched as Steve slunk through the living room and disappeared into the back of the house. His partner was so quiet even Danny couldn't hear the _snick_ of the lanai door open and closing.

Smooth Dog indeed.

Danny turned back toward the window. The sniper hadn't moved, but his gun was still aiming right at the window and Danny bit his lip.

"_You lifted me over your head one-handed like I weighed no more than a matchstick."_

He rubbed his forehead.

"_When you kicked the wall, you didn't even break a toe. And you kicked it _hard_, D."_

Danny sighed loudly.

"_You shouldn't have been able to catch up to the Camaro, it was going over fifty and that drive up to the ridge was so rutted the car bottomed out a few times on the way up."_

Chin's words had been chilling. But the video…the video was even moreso.

From what Chin and Kono had seen from behind, they'd pieced together that Steve had jumped a second too late just because the car was impossible to control, that he'd sailed out of it as soon as it crested the ridge and went over, and that Danny had _dove_ after it like he was just taking a dunk in the Pacific.

The next thing the cousins had known, they were on their hands and knees staring over the side of the cliff expecting to see two dead partners. What they'd seen was exactly what Chin had captured, with the exploding Camaro as a backdrop.

Dammit, Danny had liked that car. It was where his and Steve's carguments had been born. He scowled. So much for Grace getting it when she turned sixteen.

Movement out of Danny's left peripheral made him shift his eyes that direction. He caught a glimpse of Mr. Tan-Cargo-Pants-and-Black-Tee-Shirts-Are-Fahionable making his way through the bushes around the perimeter of the McGarrett land and tensed, turning the safety off on the submachine gun and readying his trigger finger.

A submachine gun. Christ, the most ordnance he'd ever played with back in Jersey had been his father's shotgun and his police-issued handgun.

Now he messed with everything from grenades to rocket launchers to BAMF shotguns (when Chin would let it out of his sight) to weapons that probably weren't legal in the United States. Of course, Hawaii followed its own rules and Steve McGarrett, well…he followed a different set yet.

Thing was, Danny had warmed to the whole thing, to the point where he was ready, willing and able to fire the weapon he was holding in his hands, where once he would've dropped it like a hot potato and given Steve endless shit for having it in his house in the first place.

He needed to remind the idiot to get locks put on everything before Grace came over because, shit.

Danny's eyes widened. _Oops._

The sniper had heard Steve. _So much for Smooth Dog_, Danny thought, moving to the front door. He peeked through one of its windows. The sniper peered into the bushes and backed into the driveway. Which gave Danny what he needed.

Lickety-split he had the door open and was running toward the man yelling at him to drop the rifle and get down. But of course, suspects don't generally listen, and so the man raised the rifle and aimed it right into the bushes. Where Danny imagined he could probably actually see Steve.

Stupid Neanderthal was in danger _again_.

Well, it wasn't going to happen. Not on Danny's watch, at least. So Danny took aim with the squarish weapon he held and sprayed a horizontal rainbow of bullets that would've made Rambo proud.

The sniper went down.

Steve and Danny both rushed to stand over the man, with Steve kicking the rifle well out of his reach. But neither of them needed to worry, because the sniper was dead.

And when it registered for them both who the man was, all they could do was stare at each other in disbelief.

Danny hadn't killed just any sniper. Danny had killed Wo Fat.


	21. Chapter 21

When Chin and Kono showed up in their separate vehicles – and _sans_ their significant others – it was to find no sign of Steve, Danny or the man they'd said on the phone that Danny had killed.

Danny threw the front door of the house open before Chin could knock. He was pale and shaking, and Chin's countenance went from curiosity and disbelief to concern in a heartbeat. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah, sure," Danny replied. He turned and led the cousins through the house out to the lanai. Steve was finishing wrapping a body in an olive green tarpaulin and had just taken a length of rope and slid it under the legs.

"Where's Alan Noshimuri?" was how Steve greeted them.

"At the hospital still, far as I know," Chin replied. "Is that really Wo Fat?"

"It's really him," Steve said with a curt nod. It didn't escape Kono's or Chin's attention that Steve, too, was paler than normal.

"What happened?" Kono asked as she and her cousin came closer to look down at the face of the victim. Sure enough, it was none other than the man Steve had been after since finding out Hesse was working for him when he'd murdered John McGarrett.

"He was sniping from out front. Nearly killed me," Steve replied, voice clipped. "Danny saved my life. Again."

"How?" Chin asked.

"I saw Steve go down a few seconds before it happened," Danny replied, running a hand through his hair. "I don't remember things like flying or having super strength," he continued, "but I can't ignore the fact that I'm seeing the future. Not after this," he finished with a wave of his hand to indicate Steve, Wo Fat's corpse and the situation in general.

Steve finished tying the rope around the body, then stood and lifted it into his arms. "Chin, let me in to the garage," he said.

"What are you going to do with him?" Kono asked.

"Put him in the deep freeze until we know for sure what's going on with Aron Noshimuri."

Chin's eyebrows shot up to his hairline even as he moved to open the rear door of the garage. "You're not bringing in HPD?"

"I don't know that I can trust them where the death of a man like Wo Fat is concerned," Steve said. "Plus Danny's had another premonition."

Chin pulled out his keys, unlocked the garage door and swung it open. Steve stepped through, but Chin's attention was back on Danny, who'd sunk into one of the chairs surrounding the large patio table. His head was in his hands, then he raked his fingers through hair that not only wasn't slicked back like usual, but was so wavy it was almost curly.

At least now Chin knew why the man kept it plastered down to his head.

He crouched next to Danny, hand on his shoulder, as Kono came to Danny's other side, also crouched down, and gently laid her hand on Danny's leg. "What did you see?" she asked.

Danny let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Noshimuri. One of them, I can't tell which since they're twins. It was right after we realized the man I'd killed was Wo Fat, out there in the driveway," he replied. He took a deep, shaky breath. Chin squeezed his shoulder. "We were in the hospital, in the hall right outside the room I was in."

"How do you know it was that exact hallway?" Chin asked.

"Remember how there were three gurneys in the hall not too far from my door?" Chin nodded. "And there's a mark on the wall just outside the room I was in, a silver streak, like someone scraped metal along it. I saw it. Every damn detail."

"So what happened in this vision?" Kono asked as Steve emerged from the garage, turned and locked the door behind him.

Danny looked up and into her eyes. "Stupid idiot partner of mine jumped between me and Noshimuri just as he fired. Got Steve square in the chest, threw him back into me. Then Noshimuri was shot from behind."

"By who?" Chin asked, reeling a little from the mental image Danny's explanation provided.

"I don't know. It ended with Noshimuri starting to fall. He was dead." Danny swallowed hard. "So was Steve," he finished in a small voice.

"Not gonna happen, D," Steve said. "You've had the premonition, which means we're going to stop it."

"No. It means _I_ have to stop it."

"I helped you rescue Grace and Rachel," Steve reminded him, that pinched, pissed-off look on his face that Danny knew so well.

Danny rocketed to his feet. "They weren't the ones who blew up in my dream!" he practically yelled, arms waving like mini windmills. "It was _you_ who died, _not_ them!"

"But you couldn't see who was driving in your dream. You don't know for sure who was in that car when it exploded."

Danny looked up, held Steve's eyes and whispered, "I knew. I knew it was you, sure as I know you're standing in front of me right now." He paced away, hand through his hair again. "Each time I've had to be the one to stop you from getting killed." He held up one hand and began ticking points off on his fingers. "First dream I had wasn't about anyone dying, it was about me seeing you and Grace react to me having a seizure, so that's the only one that doesn't fit. But when Noshimuri showed up in the door with a gun pointed at you, I tackled you so you wouldn't take the bullet. Then with the Camaro, even though Grace and Rachel were in danger, the thing I had to do was save _you_ from dying, which you would've if I hadn't…flown."

He stopped his pacing and looked to where Chin and Kono were flanking Steve. Steve, whose arms were folded defiantly over his chest, who was doing his best imitation of Scary Bad-Ass SEAL Boy. "And then here at the house, I saw Wo Fat's sniper shot take you out right in front of me. Do you realize that at first I didn't know it wasn't actually _happening_? I almost wasn't in time!" He huffed out a breath. "Dammit, Steve, I know you think you can save the world, but for whatever reason, I've got these damn visions now so _I_ can save _you_. And that means you're not going anywhere near that hospital, period."

Just then Steve's cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pants pocket, never taking his eyes off Danny. "McGarrett." As he listened his eyes got wide. "Okay, Duke. We'll be there as fast as we can."

"Be where?" Kono asked.

Chin chimed in, "What happened?"

"Alan Noshimuri was headed for the hospital parking garage when he was attacked."

"Is he dead?" Danny asked.

"No, they've got him in surgery. He took an eight-inch blade to the gut."

"Was it his brother?"

"Nobody knows, Kono. Duke's running the surveillance footage but there isn't a camera that focuses on the place Alan was found bleeding out by a nurse going off-duty."

"No!" Danny yelled as Steve made for the lanai doors. He stepped right into Steve's path, nearly getting run over.

"Danny, we _have_ to go to the hospital."

"Why? So we can watch Aron Noshimuri kill you? Are you fucking _kidding_ me?"

"I'll wear a vest," Steve said, growing exasperated. "I'm not sitting this out, D. Aron's after me and he nearly killed your daughter and your ex-wife because of me—"

"_Fuck_, Steve! I'm not letting you put yourself into a situation I _know_ is going to get you killed!"

Steve's hard look of insolence softened, slowly giving way to a mixture of fondness and something else entirely that Danny couldn't quite name. His hand came out, rested on his partner's shoulder and squeezed gently. "I'm not going to die, Danny."

"What the hell makes you so _sure_ of that?" Danny asked, stuffing his hands in his pockets to keep them from shaking.

Steve shrugged and gave him his signature lopsided half-smile. "You'll be there."


	22. Chapter 22

All four teammates were outfitted in bulletproof vests. Danny checked Steve's three times before Steve finally swatted his hands away, scowled at him and groused, "You're taking this beyond concern to mother henning."

"Well, excuse the hell out of me for living. And trying to keep _you_ living."

Steve hated this whole situation. Fucking _hated_ it.

Sure, yay, Wo Fat was dead. It seemed almost too _easy _and that was part of what was bothering Steve so much. But the whole goddamn thing, Wo Fat or no, was like he'd suddenly been thrust into an episode of _The Twilight Zone_, where rather than being the one who knew every angle of the situation, he was the one not only in the dark, but also _not_ the one who was in control of a damn thing.

He couldn't just pull his gun and order Danny's brain to stop showing him the future.

He couldn't order Danny not to worry about him.

He couldn't whip out his knife and threaten the X-ray, CAT and MRI scanners to stop saying Danny's got a massive brain injury one minute and no sign that it ever existed the next.

He couldn't come up with a tactical plan for premonitions.

And it seemed Danny was right, that it wasn't Steve who could change what was going to happen next. He wasn't even the one who _knew_, completely dependent on Danny interpreting what he saw. Dependent on Danny for his life.

And while he'd figured out that yes, Aron Noshimuri was probably working for Wo Fat directly – which was why Wo Fat himself had tried to take Steve out at his house after Aron had failed to do so at the hospital – he didn't know why it had suddenly escalated to that.

After all, Wo Fat had had Steve in his sights plenty of times since John's murder. He'd very nearly had him for good in Korea, but whether he'd intended to kill Steve before his team rescued him, nobody knew for sure.

So why now? Was it revenge for having been outfoxed in Korea? Wo Fat had finally gotten his shit together and sent Aron after Steve, then come after him himself when that didn't go as planned? He would've come alone to the McGarrett house with only a sniper rifle for a companion thinking what? That Danny wasn't there? That Danny wouldn't be Steve's backup like he always was? That Steve and Danny together couldn't outfox him?

Because the Halawa security cameras had shown that Wo Fat and Wo Fat alone had gone in and murdered Victor Hesse, Steve could buy as a theory that the man's arrogance would make him think he could do Steve in just as easily. But how did Danny's head injury fit into this, or did it? How could anyone know that Danny would just happen to go shopping, a grocery bag would just happen to break, and that he'd happen to somehow fall down the stairs at his apartment building as a result?

Maybe Danny's fall _had_ been helped. Maybe Aron or Wo Fat had pushed him or something, and Danny just didn't remember. But they couldn't have guaranteed a brain injury, there was no _way_ they could've known Danny falling would lead to requiring the services of brain surgeon Alan Noshimuri, thus guaranteeing Aron a way to get close to Steve undetected.

It was making Steve's head hurt, these infinitely spiraling circles in his mind, and he rubbed his temples just as Chin came even with him at the door to the hospital parking garage. "You okay?"

Steve sighed. Danny and Kono were right behind them. "I'm fine."

"Famous last words."

"Shut up, D."

"Fuck you."

"Guys, guys," Kono said, holding up her hands and shooting them equally scathing looks. "Come on, we've got enough to worry about here."

Both Steve and Danny clamped their jaws shut as Steve opened the door to the parking garage and stepped through with Danny on his heels.

"They're just worried," Chin said to Kono before they followed them. "Though I'll bet for different reasons."

"I know," Kono said. "I just…can't listen to them fall apart because of this, cuz."

Chin smiled. "They'll never fall apart, no matter how bad it gets. They might wind up beating the tar out of each other, but they'll never fall apart."

"Let's hope _that_ was a premonition," Kono replied, then jogged into the parking garage and up to where Steve and Danny were talking with Duke.

"…right where we found him," Duke was saying, then pointed over to the pool of blood on the floor just to the left of the door the team had come through.

All four of them got close enough to see the blood, without getting in the way of those bagging evidence from the crime scene. "What about the cameras?" Steve asked as Duke joined them.

"Nothing so far. They were fresh discs, replaced when we took the earlier ones into evidence looking for the Noshimuri lookalike that pulled a gun on you and killed a doctor for his identification," Duke replied. "I don't mind telling you, this man is like a ghost or something."

Danny looked up at Steve as the taller man cut his eye at him. "Well," Steve said, "we just happen to have a secret weapon for ghosts." Then he turned full-on and spoke volumes with his eyes as they locked with his partner's.

A faint smile graced Danny's lips. "Yeah. Trouble is I can't predict when I'll actually see one."

"See what?" Duke asked. "Ghosts? Really?"

"Never mind," Danny said, flapping his hand in Duke's direction. "Come on, let's see how Noshimuri's doing." He stopped and turned to look at the long-time HPD officer. "What floor's he on?"

"Surgery Eight on the fourth floor."

The color drained completely from Danny's face. Kono's eyes widened. "What is it?" she asked. "Are you seeing something?"

Danny shook his head slightly, eyes locking on Steve, who looked right back at him and swallowed before he replied, "No. That's the floor where Danny's room was, remember?"

"The floor where you saw Noshimuri shoot Steve in your vision," Kono said as the other shoe dropped. "Oh, my God."

"Exactly," Danny nodded. "Which means you," he jabbed his finger at Steve, "are _not_ going up there."

"We'll go," Chin offered as Steve opened his mouth to protest. He laid a hand on his task force leader's arm. "It's all right."

"No way," Steve said, shaking his head. "I'm not going to send you two up there to die in my place."

"Won't happen, _brah_," Kono said with a smile. "We weren't in Danny's vision, remember?"

"Doesn't mean your deaths won't be what changes it," Danny said. "Fuck!"

"What are you guys talking about?" Duke asked, perplexed.

"Never mind," Steve said, and strode back through the door into the hospital.

"Wait, where are you going?" Danny asked, stomping after him.

"Exactly where you think I'm going," Steve said, his long, fast strides making Danny practically have to jog to keep up with him.

"We just _had_ this conversation! You are _not_ going up to the fourth floor!"

"D, I am _not_ having this conversation at _all_. I'm wearing a bulletproof vest. You saw me get shot in the chest, right? Well, look," he said, thumping his Kevlar-covered heart with his fist, "not going to happen."

"Steve."

Danny's tone of voice made Steve stop and turn to face him. "Danny, I get that you're worried. I get that what you saw…well, I can't even imagine how you're dealing with this. But I also can't ignore the fact that while Wo Fat may be dead, Aron Noshimuri is still around here _somewhere_, and since it's me he's after, I'm the best bait to draw him out."

Steve searched his partner's eyes for a moment, nodded once and continued on toward the elevator. Chin followed him while Kono hung back to see what Danny was going to do. When she asked him as much, he ran a hand down his face and sighed. "Only thing I can do," he said. "Hope like hell I can still do whatever it is I have to, to keep the stupid bastard alive."

If Kono noticed his hands shaking, she didn't mention it as they boarded the elevator with the rest of their team.

And if Danny stood a little bit closer to Steve than he usually did, well…nobody could really blame him.

But Danny couldn't get his heart to stop trying to thump its way out of his chest.

Or the image of Steve's being blown clean through, out of his mind.


	23. Chapter 23

They exited the elevator with weapons drawn, on full alert. Chin and Kono went left and started searching each and every room in the east wing hallway. Danny and Steve went right, stopped briefly at the nurse's station and asked the nurses to remove all non-essential personnel from the floor. Two hospital security guards and three HPD officers were next given orders to clear all civilians from the entire fourth floor and start searching all the rooms in the west wing hall. Danny and Steve would be taking the surgical ward hallway, which was straight back from the nurse's station.

Danny breathed a sigh of relief, because this meant Steve wasn't going to be anywhere near the room he'd been in. It meant Steve wouldn't be killed. With a renewed sense of purpose, he stealthily followed his partner into the hall.

The single HPD officer standing guard outside Surgery Eight, three-quarters of the way down the surgical ward hall, tensed as he watched the two leads of Five-0 enter rooms, and then a minute later return to the hall. Their faces were drawn tightly, Steve scowling and Danny looking determined, and the officer put his hand on the butt of his gun, ready for whatever the hell it was Five-0 seemed to be anticipating.

Finding nothing in the first two operating theaters, nor in any of the supply rooms or the recovery room along the way, Danny and Steve stopped at the officer's side. "That Dr. Noshimuri in there?" Steve asked with a nod toward the wide viewing window into Surgery Eight.

"Yes, sir. Dr. Ma, Dr. Wo and four nurses were cleared by Sergeant Lukela to be in there working on him."

"Have you seen or heard anything unusual since you took your post?" Danny asked. "Anyone dressed like a doctor, anyone who looks like Dr. Noshimuri?"

"Wait," Steve said, holding up a hand before the officer could respond. "You said four nurses, Dr. Ma and a Dr…Wo?"

"Yes, sir."

Steve peered through the window, the frown on his face deepening so much his eyebrows were touching. "Steve?" Danny said, looking through the window as well. "What is it?"

"Dr. Wo, Danny? _Wo_?"

"Wo." Danny's eyes widened. "Fat?"

"Is Dr. Wo male or female?" Steve asked.

The officer replied, "Male. Asian. About five-ten."

"Jesus Christ," Steve breathed.

At that very moment one of the doctors looked up and over the body of Alan Noshimuri lying on the table with tubes in his nose and deep into his throat and a surgical cloth draped over his abdomen. The corners of the doctor's eyes crinkled like he was smiling, two glittering brown orbs piercing Steve straight through.

"Oh, my God, it's him," Steve breathed.

"How's that possible?" Danny asked. "I _killed_ him!"

Steve turned away and stalked a few paces down the hall. "He's going to kill Alan," he said when he was well clear of the viewing window.

Danny went up to him. "If we go in there now, assuming you're right about who that is, he could kill _everyone_ in that room. Ma and the nurses. You."

"What's going on?" the officer asked as he approached them. "You're telling me Wo Fat, the guy you've been after for over a year, is in there masquerading as a doctor?"

Steve pulled his head back, indicating the officer with the jut of his chin. "What's your name?"

"Officer Don Keawe," the Hawaiian man replied.

"All right, Keawe, here's what we need you to do," Steve said, casting a sidelong glance at Danny. "Go into that room and tell them I want an update on Noshimuri's condition. Specifically speak to Dr. Wo, see if you can get him out here."

"Are you out of your mind?" Danny asked incredulously.

"Better he's coming after us than the innocent people in that OR," Steve said. "Come on, Danny. You know I'm right."

Danny ground his teeth together. Of course Steve was right. Didn't mean he had to like it. "Let me at _least_ get more HPD and the rest of our team here first."

"There might not be time! Wo Fat could kill Alan any second!"

Danny huffed, ran a hand through his hair, whipped out his cell phone and dialed Chin's number.

"Okay, Keawa, go ahead. Stay on your guard and once you get Dr. Wo out of the room, barricade the door and stay in there. You have to keep those people safe."

"Yes, sir!" Keawa said, then turned and headed into the room.

"…right now," Danny was saying into the phone. He cut the line and opened another one, hit a speed dial number and held the phone to his ear. "Duke, it's Danny. I need your guys up here at Surgery Eight. Steve thinks Wo Fat's in there with Noshimuri, we're drawing him out of the room." He looked at Steve, then away. "You may have some cleanup to do." With that, he ended the call.

Steve inched up to the window and peeked into the room. "Get ready," he said. "It looks like Keawa's got him coming out."

"Shit," Danny breathed, hand resettling on his gun, finger over the trigger ready to fire. "I'm in front of you."

"No way, Danny. Side by side. That's how we roll."

"Now when your _life_ is at—"

Danny didn't get a chance to finish his sentence. The OR door swung open. Just as it did, he went rigid.

_The world spun around him. Suddenly it stopped spinning and he focused on the face of a man in green scrubs. The man used his left hand to pull the mask down from his face, his right hand moving up under the front of his shirt, where Danny saw a black gun tucked into the waistband of his pants._

"_No!" Danny cried._

_Then the world spun again. He heard a shot. He heard other voices yelling. When the world stopped spinning, Steve was on the floor at Danny's feet in a pool of blood. Then he felt a searing pain and realized too late that he'd been shot._

"Danny?" Steve was saying, snapping his fingers in front of his partner's face.

Danny squeaked.

"Danny?" Steve said again as the man he was convinced was Wo Fat came to stand right in front of them. He heard Keawa securing the OR doors from the inside. Movement caught his attention and he leveled his gun at the doctor dressed in green scrubs with a mask over his face and a green paper cap hiding his hair.

"I understand you want an update on Dr. Noshimuri's condition," the doctor said. He looked pointedly at Steve's gun. "You needn't threaten me to get one."

"Take your mask off," Steve ordered.

"But I'm headed directly back into the operating room. Surely you don't want my germs infecting the patient."

Steve swallowed hard. The voice didn't sound quite the same, but still he was convinced that the man facing the business end of his weapon was Wo Fat. "Take the goddamn mask off," Steve said. "Show your face."

The man's eyes crinkled like he was smiling, just as they'd done when he'd met Steve's eyes through the viewing window.

"Steve," came Danny's voice like a squeak. Then he grabbed Steve's arm.

"Danny, get _off_!" Steve growled, shaking his partner's hand away. "It's Wo Fat. I _know_ it is."

The doctor's left hand came up, pinched the fabric of his mask and began to pull it down. Steve heard Danny's breathing quicken.

"I am afraid," the man said as his right hand moved to the hem of his shirt, "that you are correct, Commander McGarrett."

His right hand moved in a blur. Danny yelled and pushed Steve out of the way. Steve fired a wild shot as he went sprawling to the floor. Danny's gun went off just as Wo Fat, mask now hanging around his neck, pointed his weapon right at him and squeezed the trigger.

Hopping back to his feet, Steve heard a strange sound to his left just as Duke, half a dozen HPD officers, Chin and Kono rounded the corner into the surgical ward hallway, feet pounding the linoleum.

Danny squeaked.

Steve dropped his gun to the floor, fear seizing him. "Danny?" His partner reached out, grabbed the front of Steve's vest and sagged into him. His eyes were wide, but unfocused. Steve caught grabbed his biceps and gently lowered him to the floor. "_Danny_!"

The last thing Danny Williams saw as darkness crept into the edges of his vision was Steve's face. _At least_, he thought, _he's alive._

_The face of his daughter flashed through his mind. Sad, crying, clinging to a body lying covered by a sheet on a bed. He saw Rachel gently pull the sobbing little girl away and then Steve entered the scene, only there was nothing stoic about him. His eyes were rimmed red and full of unshed tears._

"_Why did you let Danno die?" Grace wailed, running to Steve and pummeling his stomach with her fists. "Why?"_

Danny heard his own voice, though it felt like it wasn't even him speaking. "I'm sorry," is what he choked out. "I can't change…this one."

Funny how even though he knew he'd been shot, it didn't hurt.

Then his world went black.


	24. Chapter 24

Steve looked up as Wo Fat darted down to the end of the surgical ward hall, made a right and raced down the wing where…the wing where Danny's room was. He steeled himself against the images Danny had put into his mind with the last premonition he'd had.

"You hang in there, D," he said, forcing Danny's own hand against the wound on the side of his neck, then rolling him just enough that the hand would stay in place even with him unconscious. "I'll be right back."

Steve was _not_ going to die today, no matter _what_ Danny's vision had told him.

He was _not_.

Kono took over Danny's care along with Duke and another HPD officer. Steve raced down to the end of the hall, checked the corner and made a right. The hallway was empty.

He checked the first room. Nothing. Second room. Nothing. Third room. _Dammit!_ Nothing!

Chin and the remaining officers were behind him, but weren't sure what or who he was looking for. Finally Steve got to the room Danny had been in. Just down the hall was where his partner had lifted him above his head. Where Danny had kicked the wall and not hurt himself doing it. Where he'd given Danny a hug just to get him to calm down.

And this spot right here? This was where Danny had seen Steve die.

"Not today," Steve whispered, then kicked the room's door open.

A gun was leveled at his face.

He aimed his own right at the hollow of Wo Fat's neck.

"How's your partner?"

Steve let himself smile a little at the familiar tactic. "Better than you're going to be in about ten seconds."

Wo Fat smiled that combination of Cheshire cat and I'm-about-to-royally-fuck-you-over grin that Steve hated with a passion. But he smiled right back. He knew as well as the asshole facing him, that if either of them shot, the other would be dying right along with him.

"I'm not who you think I am," he said.

"Oh, just like it wasn't you at my house trying to kill me with a sniper shot?"

Wo Fat shrugged. "It wasn't me. Well, I suppose I should clarify that, and I suppose I should also assume you killed him for me. I should thank you, but I won't. He fucked me over for the last time."

Steve's eyes widened as the man's fingernails scraped against his cheek and skin peeled away. "What the _fuck_?"

Twenty interminable seconds later, both Chin, who'd come to Steve's side, and Steve, were seeing not Wo Fat standing before them…but Aron Noshimuri.

Chin looked at Steve, then back as Aron grinned. "Hollywood makeup has many uses, don't you think?"

"Now that's something you don't see every day," Chin remarked, his gun also leveled at who they now knew was Aron.

"I did everything he ever asked of me," Aron said, gun aimed directly at Steve's head. "He tried to kill me after I failed to take you out here, and said he was going to do the job himself. For that, you avenged me, so I thank you."

"First off, my _partner's_ the one who killed Wo Fat," Steve growled. "Second, you just shot that same partner so that means you're going down."

Aron smiled again, then lunged forward, shoved both Steve and Chin out of the way and managed to get into the hall.

"One more move and I'll shoot," Steve warned.

Aron whirled on him. "Not before I get one off. _Babe_."

Steve scowled.

"Is that not what your _partner_ calls you?"

"Fuck you," Steve hissed, finger tightening over the trigger. "I'm telling you one more time to put your weapon down or every officer in this hall will use you for target practice."

"Should've taken me out when you had the chance, McGarrett," Aron countered. Then he fired.

The bullet hit Steve square in his Kevlar-covered chest, throwing him backwards into Chin's arms.

Then another shot rang out.

Chin looked beyond where Aron fell to the floor dead as he struggled to help Steve regain his footing. His eyes widened in disbelief. "Hiro Noshimuri?"

Hiro, not four feet behind his dead son's body, threw his gun to the floor. "He brought dishonor to the name of Noshimuri." He met Steve's eyes. "In my country, dishonor is the worst imaginable offense."

* * *

><p>Every sound was muffled. He could tell there were voices. He couldn't make one out from another, couldn't pinpoint anyone he knew. Then the voices retreated and he was left listening to nothing but a steady beeping. It was mesmerizing, and he thought he should maybe know what it was because it was familiar. But for the life of him, he couldn't place what it meant.<p>

Then another sensation broke through that had nothing at all to do with hearing. It was like a heavy weight had rested somewhere on him, along his right side. Well, not _heavy_, exactly, but definitely something bigger than a blanket or a feather. A feather. Birds had feathers. Birds flew.

He flew, too.

He…flew.

Suddenly he saw it all. He saw himself flying through the sky, the sun shining down, and Grace flying next to him. Saw her ripped away before she could take his hand, _knew_ he'd seen this before.

Grace crying her eyes out. Steve taking her in his arms. _Steve_ crying.

Then he saw the glint of metal. A gun. Steve dying, but then…not. Danny moving fast, so fast that every IV and monitoring line, every lead connected to his head, was ripped away as the shot was fired. Steve on the floor. Steve alive.

The Camaro exploding on the freeway. But then it didn't explode, and he was pulling Grace into Steve's truck, pulling Rachel out of the Camaro's passenger window. Where was Steve?

Steve was driving. Steve was going to die.

Over the ridge went the shiny silver car. Steve hung suspended in mid-air, and then _Danny_ was suspended in mid-air. He dove over the cliff, got under his partner and caught him in his arms. He looked up to find Chin and Kono gaping at them.

He looked at Steve. Steve was _alive_.

And Danny was flying.

Steve fell as the sniper shot a bullet clean through his brain. But then suddenly he _wasn't_ dead, and Danny was moving faster than light almost, tackling him to the floor, banging his own head against it in the process. Coming to only to have Steve tackle _him_ to the floor.

The sniper turning to shoot Steve. Danny spraying him with bullets.

Wo Fat dead. And then? Another gun. Steve darted in front of Danny in the hallway just outside his hospital room and took a shot to the chest.

But then they weren't in that hallway at all, they were in a different one and Wo Fat was there, but how, how when Danny had killed him at Steve's house? And then Danny did the only thing he could think to do. He pushed Steve out of the way. He took the bullet.

Which left Steve alive.

_So I'm dead_, he thought as the weight along his right side moved against him. Then another sensation, something wet on his right pectoral. He should know what that was, he considered as it seemed to spread.

And then a voice. A deep one, but speaking softly. The weight was removed from his body. He heard a strange sound, a sort of choked-off little sound, but what was it? What did it mean?

More voices, this time he could tell one of them was a woman's. Speaking softly, hushed tones, he couldn't understand the words.

And then silence once more.

All except for the beeping.

Another weight. This one wasn't nearly as heavy as the first. It was just a touch, then it grew heavier and he felt something putting pressure on…on…his hand. That was it. He could tell now it was his hand. Somebody was squeezing his hand.

The low voice again, speaking softly, nearly whispering. He struggled to understand the words, felt they were important, that he _needed_ to hear them.

"…do that…"

Slowly. Slowly.

"…thinking?"

A little clearer now.

"…be okay, Danno."

Danno? But this wasn't Grace's voice.

"Please. Please don't do this."

Don't do what? What was he doing?

"If you wanted a divorce," the voice sobbed, then stopped altogether. He felt the pressure on his hand increase. A whispered, "All you had to do was ask."

Divorce? He wasn't married! He and Rachel were long since divorced, what the hell?

"Kono says you're my work wife."

Work wife? Kono? Kono. Kono! He knew that name! Work wife? He was nobody's _wife_! Work? Work.

"Chin agrees."

Chin. Whose chin? Chin. Work. Chin. Kono. Five-0! That was his work! Chin and Kono, they were his teammates! Yes! He knew this!

"Kono says this is a helluva way to show you want out of this thing."

Out of what thing? Work? Five-0? No. No, he doesn't want out of Five-0! Thing. He's always doing a thing with…with someone. With…who?

"Alan Noshimuri survived. Dr. Ma was stitching him up when you were…when you went down."

Ma. He should know that name, right? Noshimuri. Yes. Alan, Alan the Good Twin. He knew that. Alan was good.

"Chin says the body disappeared from my deep freeze in the garage, no signs of forced entry."

Wo Fat. Wo Fat wanted to kill Steve. Wanted to kill…Aron…Noshimuri. Danny's head began to spin.

"The man we thought was Wo Fat shot you."

Shot. Yes. Yes, Danny knew he'd been shot.

"But your bullet didn't hit him. He ran down to the room you were in before and Danny, you won't believe this. It was Hiro who killed his own son, the man here wasn't Wo Fat at all, it was Aron Noshimuri in disguise. His own father killed him, Danny."

Hiro. Hiro? Hiro was there? He…what? Yes, he must be dead because these words weren't making any sense. But who was this? Was this God telling him his sins, replaying his life for him? No, no, this wasn't Danny's life, this was...something like...a briefing?

"HPD's got him in protective custody, and guess who else just showed up, pissed off at Hiro for leaving Japan? Joe White, Danny. Joe's here."

Joe White. He should know that name, shouldn't he? Joe. Wo. Wo Fat. Killed Aron. Who? Hiro? What the hell? Who was this talking to him?

And then there was a stab of pain that shot through his head and Danny heard no more.

* * *

><p>Steve felt the tremor go through Danny's hand a millisecond before that hand clamped so hard around his he couldn't pull away no matter how much muscle he put into it. "Doctor!" he yelled over his shoulder, still trying to pull out of Danny's grip.<p>

As Danny's body shook.

As the heart monitor beeped wildly, then its alarm started blaring.

As he heard a Code being called over the loudspeaker and realized it was being called for this room.

"No no _no_ no no," Steve whispered, giving up on trying to get out of Danny's grip. He bent over his partner's convulsing body and laid a hand on his forehead. "Danny, come on, don't do this to me. Don't do this to _Grace_."

He felt his eyes fill – whether from the pain of Danny practically breaking his hand or from emotions he _refused_ to give into, he didn't know – and blinked rapidly just as Dr. Ma raced into the room with four nurses on his tail. "You need to back off!" Ma yelled. One of the nurses jerked a crash cart to a halt near Danny's head.

"I can't, he's got my hand!"

"Shit," Ma breathed. "Over here!" he motioned to the nurse with the cart. She quickly rolled it around the end of the bed to the other side. "Penytoin, ten cc's IV, _stat_!" Ma bellowed.

Steve watched a nurse pull clear liquid from a small vial into a syringe, then inject it into Danny's IV line down near where it was inserted into the back of his hand. The hand that still held Steve's in an iron grip.

Just like that, Danny's convulsions stopped and Steve's hand, feeling like it was had to be busted in ten places, was released.

Then Steve heard the unmistakable sound of a flatline and his blood froze in his veins.


	25. Chapter 25 & Epilogue

_Author's Note:_

_This final chapter of "Future Perfect" is dedicated to the loving memory of Kylen's father, who passed away tragically during the writing of this story. My love goes to you out across the airwaves, Kylen. You have supported me in my fan fiction writing since I began doing "Hawaii Five-0" fanfic, and I am honored that this story was able to help you through a difficult time. It's truly humbling to know how much power there is in the words that we write._

* * *

><p>Danny's eyes popped open. His neck hurt. His chest hurt. His arms hurt. Hell, every goddamn muscle hurt.<p>

It hurt. Wait…it _hurt_? He was _hurting_?

"Steve!" he called out because it was the first name to come to mind, the name of the person he knew could help clear this whole thing up because, "I hurt!"

"I'm here! What hurts? Wait a minute. You…hurt?"

Danny nodded. Steve picked up the morphine drip controller and placed it in Danny's hand.

Danny looked up at his partner as he thumbed the maximum dose to release into his IV line. "I shouldn't be feeling this," he said.

"Maybe you're…not impervious to pain anymore?"

Without warning, Danny reached out, grabbed Steve's arm in a vice-like grip and tried to lift him.

He wasn't even able to get Steve's _arm_ to move, let alone the entirety of him.

Danny's eyes widened. "Wonder if I can still fly."

Steve smiled. "If you can, Kono's already called shotgun."

Danny barked out a laugh but realized the right side of his neck was protesting that rather vehemently. "What happened?"

"I told you last time you were awake. You don't remember?"

Danny dug deep into his memories. "Wo Fat," he whispered. "Not Wo Fat. Noshimuri. Alan. Aron. Hospital. Shot!" Suddenly everything Steve had said to him…and the fact that he hadn't been able to _identify_ the voice as belonging to Steve…hit him like a tidal wave. "Hiro!"

Steve grabbed Danny's hand, unable to think what else to do, just as the morphine started sliding through his system. Danny visibly relaxed, but his grip on McGarrett's hand remained tight. Steve winced. Danny looked down and quickly released his hold. "What the hell happened to your hand? It looks like my daughter's paint palette."

"Those bruises would be courtesy of you, Danno."

Danny frowned. "What'd I do?"

"Had a seizure."

"While I was holding your hand?"

"Nope. While _I_ was holding _yours_."

"Control freak. Why were you holding my hand? Do I really want to know?"

Steve just looked at him. "No."

"Didn't think so."

"Your heart stopped."

Danny swallowed, looked down at his hands now in his own lap, then back up at Steve. "Yeah?"

"Thought we were going to lose you."

"You'll never get rid of me that easily."

Steve grinned. "Good."

Danny wished there was a radio to turn on. Even _Sexy Eyes _would do. "Where's Grace?"

"She and Rachel are still at home. Hospital's crawling with HPD and the Feds right now. Guess who came back for this one?"

"Joe? You said Joe came back."

"Well, yeah, he _was_ back in town, but Lori. Lori came back because Homeland Security's got a file on Noshimuri and Wo Fat about three feet thick."

"Oh, Christ. Tell me she didn't greet you with a hug."

"She did."

"Ugh."

"What's the matter, Danno? Jealous?"

"Yes! You're _my_ partner!"

Steve grinned. "Never was in question. I should get the doctor, let them know you're coherent. Well, for you, anyway."

"Oh, he's a comedian now. You know, Steven, that's your problem. You think you're funny, but you _so_ are not funny."

"This from the man who called the head found in a box, Jack."

"That _was_ funny."

Steve raised an eyebrow and folded his arms over his chest.

"Well, it was," Danny pouted.

"Yeah, and you were all gung ho to be Ponch until Kono thought John was hot."

"Pot, kettle, work wife."

"No no no, Danno, _you're_ the work wife."

"Pfft, what does Kono know?"

"You henpeck me," Steve began, ticking the points off on his fingers.

"I express rational concern!"

"You nag me."

"Remind you of rules."

"You yell at me."

"I only yell when I'm worried!"

"You bitch and complain about everything I do but still follow me around like a Jack Russell Terrier, you—"

"Tell me you did _not_ just compare me to Eddie from _Frasier_."

"I di—hey, you watched that show?"

"Did I watch—of _course_ I watched that show. Didn't everybody?"

"So tell me one thing."

"What?"

"Why'd the guy who was so clearly gay, wind up getting with that woman?"

"Because it's primetime television, Steven. What was he going to do, sleep with his brother?"

Steve made a face.

"My point exactly. Now go, be useful and fetch the doctor instead of asking me about television shows. Although, admittedly, the last couple of days have been like one around here."

"Yes, dear."

Danny sighed, but couldn't keep the grin from his face. Couldn't keep himself from widening that grin. He was back. He remembered everything, and while he apparently was no longer Super Danno, hey, that was fine by him. It was too big a burden, he'd realized through the whole thing, to know that you could save anyone from anything, and yet couldn't if you weren't there when shit went down.

If anything had ever happened to anyone he cared about while he had those weird comic book superhero abilities, he'd never get over the guilt. He wondered how Superman felt when stuff like that happened, then thought maybe he needed to hit his head again for wondering about a fictional character's feelings. After all, who cared about a fictional character, anyway?

Dr. Ma strode in along with a very slowly walking Alan Noshimuri. Danny tensed, but Noshimuri held up his hand. "Don't worry, I'm the good guy."

"Where's your father?" Danny asked as a nurse began taking Danny's vitals.

Alan shot a look across the bed at Steve, who was standing against the windows waiting for everyone to do their thing and declare his partner on the road to recovery. "He has returned to Japan."

Danny looked at Steve. "You're kidding."

"No," Steve replied with a shake of his head. "Joe."

Danny sighed. "Figures."

"He felt my brother's actions brought dishonor upon his family name."

"Unlike hunting down innocent people and killing them when it's his idea, huh?" Danny asked, then caught Alan's pained look. "Sorry. I shouldn't bitch at you about it. You've helped me out through this, so…thanks."

"Detective Williams, you can thank me best by allowing Dr. Ma and me to publish your case in medical journals."

Steve opened his mouth to protest but Danny held up a hand. "As soon as this chunk your twin took out of the side of my neck is healed up, I'd be happy to have you do other tests. I'm as curious about what happened as you are."

Alan grinned.

Steve scowled.

"Now, when can I go see my daughter?"

"She's on her way," Steve advised, phone held in hand. "I texted Rachel."

"Oh, so now you two are text buddies, huh?"

Steve just grinned at him and mouthed the word, "Jealous?" Danny was seriously going to kill him.

So the vitals were finished and Danny was told by both Alan and Dr. Ma that he'd probably be okay in a couple of days, all things considered, assuming the seizure meds they had him on held, but that he had to stay for at _least_ forty-eight more hours to let his neck wound heal and to ensure there were no more seizures forthcoming.

He groused, but agreed. After all, he had to set an example for I-run-around-after-getting-shanked-in-the-gut-or-a-broken-arm McGarrett, right?

Grace and Rachel came and went, and by the time visiting hours were over ("I'm not a visitor, I'm a permanent fixture." "He's right, Doc, I can't get rid of him to save my life." "Shut up, Danny."), Danny Williams was exhausted.

So Steve shoved the chair over to the corner of the room, promised not to stare at Danny while he slept because "that's just creepy, Steve," and began the vigil he didn't think he'd ever let up, epilepsy meds or not.

It was all because Steve hadn't been there that Danny had fallen down the stairs and gotten a head injury. That he now would apparently suffer from seizures for the rest of his life in spite of the fact that the brain scans showed no injuries whatsoever anymore. At least, that's what Steve told himself because hey, weight of the world on his shoulders, that was his thing.

No, of course he wasn't going to be around Danny twenty-four/seven. Then it really _would_ get creepy, and would also hamper their respective love lives just a bit, he reasoned. But he was going to do whatever he could to make sure nothing like that fall happened to his partner ever again. Although, he thought, it would've been cool if Danny had been able to keep the being-able-to-fly superpower.

He watched Danny's face light up a few moments later when none other than Dr. Gabby Asano quietly entered the room. Steve left to make some calls to Chin and Kono, content to know that Danny was in the company of someone who cared. He came back later after Gabby went home and Danny was already asleep.

Steve nodded off dreaming of flying over the jungles of Hawaii…although in _his_ mind, he was _never_ cradled like a baby or the girl he very much was _not_, thank you very much. He was going to have to talk to Danny about that. Maybe the next time they got together to watch _Enemy Mine._

Assuming he could make it through the birth scene. Ugh.

* * *

><p><strong>EPILOGUE<strong>

_The air was warm. The breeze was soft, caressing his skin like a gentle lover. He felt goosebumps rise all over his skin at the thought and smiled when the hot Hawaiian sun warmed them away._

_He was walking around the side of the McGarrett house, and found when he did that an unfamiliar…yet somehow _very_ familiar…young woman was standing on the shore, feet in the water, in a beautiful white sundress. When she turned and looked at him, a huge smile lit up her face._

"_Grace?" he said as she ran across the sand and straight into his arms. "My God, you're _beautiful_!"_

"_You say the same thing every time I visit!" she laughed, giving him a kiss on the cheek. "Silly Danno, I don't look any different than I did three days ago!"_

_He smiled up at her because she was taller than he was. Of course she was. He shook his head. "Where's Steve?"_

_She grinned and pointed out toward the water, where Danny could just make out a swimmer making his way back to shore. "Where he always is this time on a Saturday morning."_

"_You staying for breakfast?" Danny asked._

"_Do you and Uncle Steve still bitch at each other like an old married couple even after forty years?"_

"_Forty years! Has it been _that_ long?"_

_Grace laughed. "You always ask the same thing, are you getting senile?"_

"_I'll give you senile," Danny groused, and tickled the hell out of her._

_Several minutes later their antics were interrupted by a low voice that asked, "Hey, can three play this game?"_

_Danny was shocked at first when he saw that the silvery-gray once only found on Steve's temples, was now the majority of his hair color._ "_You start tickling me, McGarrett, I'll kick your ass."_

"_I'd like to see you try, Mr. Too-Many-Coco-Puffs."_

"_Shut up, you."_

_Grace just laughed and headed up to the patio table, leaving the partners staring after her. "God, she's beautiful," Danny said, eyes filled with the love only a father can feel, the pride that comes only when you've seen something you've created turn into the most perfect, wonderful human being you've ever known._

"_Of course she is," Steve replied. "Rachel's her mother."_

_Next thing Danny knew, he was chasing Steve down the beach questioning his lineage rather loudly even as Grace was howling laughing from the lanai. Once out-of-sight of any houses or people, he lunged forward and lifted his partner right off his feet, swooping into the air with Steve's hand held tightly in his._

_Danny grinned and winked. The look on Steve's face as the wind whipped through his air - one of pure joy - made him seem like he was only sixteen. Danny suddenly realized he'd give anything to be able to put that look on his partner's face for the rest of their days because for a man with such a troubled life, it was priceless. He didn't know how long they flew for, and didn't even know how it was he was making them fly to begin with, but eventually they came to land not far from the McGarrett home, Steve giving his hand a little squeeze...his way, Danny knew, of saying "Thank you."_

_When at last they made it back to the table for breakfast to join Danny's daughter along with Catherine and Gabby, Grace just shook her head, did her best impression of a Rachel Scowl that she had and said, "Boys. Some things just never change."_

"_Here's to that," Catherine grinned, and everyone held their glasses of orange juice in the air._

A gasp from the bed made Steve wake up in a nanosecond. He shot to his feet and was at Danny's bedside just as fast. He checked his watch. It was 3:14am.

"Danny? You okay?"

Well, he wasn't rattling the bed frame, at least, which meant he wasn't having a seizure.

"Jesus Christ, you scared the hell out of me," said the dark shadow on the bed.

"Ditto." Steve turned to head back to the chair, but Danny's hand caught his arm. He pivoted. "What?"

"I had another premonition."

Steve's body stiffened. "What happened? Who gets killed?"

"Nobody got killed, shot, blown up, maimed or anything else."

"Well, was it about the future?"

Danny smiled up at him. "Yeah. It was."

Steve was getting annoyed. "_Well_? Was it bad?"

"The future? No. It was…absolutely perfect." His eyelids drooped as he drifted back off to sleep. "Future perfect," he whispered.

Steve just looked at Danny for a few seconds, wondering at the strange tone of voice but figuring he wasn't going to question it. After what had happened to them all at various times in their lives, the entirety of Five-0 deserved a future that was just that: perfect.

(And the next time Steve decided to go over the edge of a cliff after a fleeing suspect, he found out that Danny still had one other superpower left…only he promised to never tell Kono. For these particular partners, flying together – even when not in life-and-death situations – became just another one of their 'things.')

* * *

><p><em>Shameless Self-Promotion at the End:<em>

_Yes, here I am again to remind those of you who may not know that I have an original novel published to both Amazon DOT com and Smashwords DOT com. It's an ebook only, but on Smashwords you can download it in any format, including simple PDF or RTF. Also there's Kindle, Sony Reader, and all other formats available. The book is called "Takers," and is the first of a series. "Takers II: Family" is due out at the beginning of May. Feel free to check my author profile here on where my author blog URL can be found. Thank you for your support!_


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